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Facility location models for immobile servers with stochastic demand
Author(s) -
Wang Qian,
Batta Rajan,
Rump Christopher M.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
naval research logistics (nrl)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.665
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1520-6750
pISSN - 0894-069X
DOI - 10.1002/nav.10110
Subject(s) - server , computer science , queueing theory , service (business) , service provider , heuristic , operations research , equivalence (formal languages) , quality of service , facility location problem , limit (mathematics) , upper and lower bounds , computer network , mathematical optimization , business , mathematics , marketing , artificial intelligence , mathematical analysis , discrete mathematics
This paper presents several models for the location of facilities subject to congestion. Motivated by applications to locating servers in communication networks and automatic teller machines in bank systems, these models are developed for situations in which immobile service facilities are congested by stochastic demand originating from nearby customer locations. We consider this problem from three different perspectives, that of (i) the service provider (wishing to limit costs of setup and operating servers), (ii) the customers (wishing to limit costs of accessing and waiting for service), and (iii) both the service provider and the customers combined. In all cases, a minimum level of service quality is ensured by imposing an upper bound on the server utilization rate at a service facility. The latter two perspectives also incorporate queueing delay costs as part of the objective. Some cases are amenable to an optimal solution. For those cases that are more challenging, we either propose heuristic procedures to find good solutions or establish equivalence to other well‐studied facility location problems. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004.