A location-inventory model for perishable agricultural product distribution centers

We consider a distribution network design problem where the decision maker needs to decide the sites of perishable agricultural product distribution centers. Each distribution center has sufficient capacity for the consumer zones it serves, and each consumer zone accepts the products only from one distribution center. The objective is to minimize the total cost that includes location costs and inventory costs at the distribution centers, and transportation costs and decay loss costs on the distribution ways. We show that this problem can be formulated as a 0-1 integer programming model, for which we propose a greedy dropping heuristic algorithm (GDHA) and a genetic algorithm (GA) with alert location-allocation local search method respectively. We present computational results for several instances of the problem with sizes ranging from 10 to 300 consumer zones. Our results show that GA suits for the model´s final satisfactory solution, while GDHA suits for the intermediate feasible solution.