Combining Lagrangian heuristic and Ant Colony System to solve the Single Source Capacitated Facility Location Problem

The facility location problems have been applied extensively in practice. We describe a Multiple Ant Colony System (MACS) to solve the Single Source Capacitated Facility Location Problem (SSCFLP). Lagrangian heuristics have been shown to produce good solutions for the SSCFLP. A hybrid algorithm, which combines Lagrangian heuristic and Ant Colony System (ACS), LH-ACS, is developed for the SSCFLP. The performance of the proposed methods are tested oil two sets of benchmark instances and compared with other heuristic algorithms in the literature. The computational results indicate that both MACS and LH-ACS are effective and efficient for the SSCFLP and competitive with other well-known algorithms. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.