Experimental comparison of heuristic and approximation algorithms for uncapacitated facility location

Abstract

The uncapacitated facility location problem (UFLP) is a problem that has been studied intensively in operational research. Recently a variety of new deterministic and heuristic approximation algorithms have evolved. In this paper, we consider five of these approaches - the JMS- and the MYZ-approximation algorithms, a version of Local Search, a Tabu Search algorithm as well as a version of the Volume algorithm with randomized rounding. We compare solution quality and execution times on different standard benchmark instances. With these instances and additional material a web page was set up [26], where the material used in this study is accessible. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.