A Metaheuristic Approach for Quantifying the Effects of the Structural Complexity in Facility Location Problems

Abstract

The proliferation of products, distribution channels and markets increase the structural complexity of the supply chains. Structural complexity generates (frequently hidden) costs that should be considered before making management decisions. Facility location is a field where the structural complexity has significant effects. The impact of structural complexity on the facility location problem is presented as a novelty in this paper. An entropy-based measure has been used for the analysis of structural complexity. Unfortunately, the integration of structural complexity in facility location problems generates new scenarios where conventional solution methods may be inappropriate due to the inherent non-linearity of the formulation. In this paper, a genetic algorithm is proposed in order to find a solution to facility location problems when structural complexity is embedded in the formulation. Moreover, the impact of the structural complexity in the original facility location problems is studied by comparing several scenarios.