THE RETURN PLANT LOCATION PROBLEM - MODELING AND RESOLUTION

The formulation and analysis of a new plant location problem is presen ted. The problem studied, herein referred to as the Return Plant Locat ion Problem (RPLP), is that of cost minimization in a system of suppli ers and customers in which there exists a return product from each cus tomer. Lagrangian decomposition based heuristic and exact solution met hods are given. The methods are applied to test problems with differen t structures and compared with the classical subgradient optimization approach. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.