Time-Satisfaction-Based Covering Location Problems On Network

Most location decisions are of strategic importance to the basis of the sustainable development as well as the cultivation of core competitive abilities of an enterprise. On the one hand, the globalization of world economy and the fiercely globalized competition have increased the frequency of location decisions progressively due to the shortening of product life cycle; on the other hand, the competition itself has made location decisions more and more important to a corporation's competition capabilities. Therefore, the organization's ability about location decisions have evolved into ability that great attention must be paid by decision makers. Especially, with the evolutions of logistics and supply chain theory studies and application researches, and with the progress of information technology, some location decisions are now becoming corporation's tactical scheme from strategic one, which put forward the urgency of structurizing some useful location problems so as to integrate it into the computer aided decision making systems, and eventually, make routine location decisions of the organization as perfect as possible. Considering that time plays significant part not only in product manufacture and service, but also in corporation's strategical and tactical scheme, in addition to the ever-increasing competition in global market with the ever-increasing homogeneity of products, time satisfaction has turned out to be one of the most important indices of customer satisfaction. This dissertation studies covering location problems on network fundamentally with some innovative perspectives on the basis of time satisfaction, gives a systemic investigation on the study methods and mechanics of time-satisfaction-based location problems on network, and dedicates comparative proportion of it to the application study on an extended covering location problem. Firstly, the thesis introduces the backgrounds, the significance, the innovative achievements and the motivations of choosing this topic. The paper dissertates the significant roles of time has been playing in the fields of manufacturing, service industry and the theories of management, summarizes the broad usage of location research in traffic, retailing, communication, municipal facilities, logistics and other management domains, etc., addresses the magnificent significance and presents the main goal and contents of this paper by appraising contemporary world economy, international technology competitive environment and the evolution of consumption notions. Secondly, the thesis reviews the origination, evolution and the literatures of location theories, especially the covering location theories, classifies the researches on location theory and introduces some general heuristics algorithms used in solving location problems. The paper summarizes the origination and ramifications of location problems, reviews the three typical location problems and some representative problems of their extensions, and analyzes the characteristics and insufficiencies of theoretic research of location in China. The paper also appraises the basic covering location problems, explains the fundamental principles of some heuristic algorithms that will be used in the paper, such as lagrangean relaxation, greedy heuristics, genetic algorithm, and states the application status of these algorithms employed in network location problems. Thirdly, according to the customer time cognition theory in cognitive psychology, the thesis scrutinizes the selecting and curve fitting principles of time satisfaction function by defining time satisfaction and time satisfaction function, analyzes the modeling skills of time-satisfaction-based location problems in diversified competitive circumstances based on the attentive scrutiny on the relationships of time satisfaction versus customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction versus customer retention. Fourthly, the thesis illustrates the usage of time satisfaction ideology and time satisfaction function in covering location problems with two classical covering location problems as examples, and provides the problems with some heuristic algorithms which have proven to be overall the best by computational experiments. The paper formulates an integer programming model under the goal of maximizing the total satisfaction of customers with the service facility's response time that be covered by facility sets in time-satisfaction-based maximal covering location problem (TSBMCLP), and presents TSBMCLP a heuristic algorithm based on lagrangean relaxation in computational experiment. In the modeling of time-satisfaction-based set covering location problem (TSBSCLP), the paper formulates TSBSCLP as an integer programming under the goal of minimizing the total fixed costs of selected facilities and constrained with some extent of covering demand and customer time satisfaction, and then provides a mixed genetic algorithm strategies to solve the variety of size of the problem in experiment. Fifthly, the thesis discusses an extension and application of time-satisfaction-based covering location problems. The paper gives a theoretic study on two-point covering location problem with capacity constrained and an application study on Kangdian Yiluo river bridge location problem of Gongyi in sequence, and provides an approach of solution and an enumeration-based optimal algorithm for this two problems respectively. Furthermore, in the application study of Kangdian Yiluo river bridge location problem ofGongyi, the paper establishes a multi-stage investment model of network expansion and its heuristic solution algorithm to make sure the feature of road network in each future stage. Finally, the thesis gives conclusion to the contents and the innovative achievements of the research, and presents the future scope, the purpose and the prospect of this topic in further studies.