Study On Cooperative Network Facility Location Problems Under Competitive Environment

Increased competition and the requirements for establishing enterprise's core competitive ability make the virtual enterprise widely spreaded, and more and more functions of enterprise penetrated with each other. Competition and cooperation are developed as a complexed environment in which a company has to survive. Cooperation are playing a more and more important role in an increasingly competition global economy. Location decision is an important part of supply chain design and management, and it is the most important aspect of strategic decision-making, which can ensure the success of corporate strategy. Cooperative location problem is a critical decision-making problem involves two or more enterprises, and it is the one of considering most aspects among all location problems. Therefore, the quality of a cooperative location decision not only decides the enterprise's facility construction costs, but also decides the future operation costs as well as enterprise's competitive advantage. As a result, how to do location research combining with cooperation and coopetition theories has an important value theoretically and practically, which will play important parts for an enterprise to survive and develop in a competitive environment. Starting with some basic cooperative location problems, and on the basis of theories of cooperation, coopetition and Network Facility Covering Location Problem, the paper studies the modeling, solving and application issues of cooperation and coopetition location problems, which will make use of cooperation and coopetition ideology within location decision-making procedure.Firstly, this paper introduces the backgrounds and significance of study. Based on the review of literatures, the problem to be studied is proposed.Secondly, some relevant basic theories that will be involved in the following research are summarized. The paper introduces the definitions and initial application fields of Set Covering Location Problems and Maximal Covering Location Problems in classical location problems, and gives the basic expression, as well as the meaning of the model. The paper also introduces the taxonomy, fundamentals, success factors and effect analysis of cooperation and coopetition theory. In the section of commonly used algorithms in Network Covering Location Problems, the paper gives a brief introduction to the fundamental principles and some basic application skills of greedy heuristics, Lagrangian relaxation algorithm, genetic algorithm and other intelligent algorithms.Thirdly, the application of stochastic travel time risk in cooperative location modeling is studied. After giving the definition of travel time risk function and some pieces of advices on the choosing of curve fitting methods, the paper analyzes the algorithm of cooperative location problem and gives some suggestions on the choosing of optimization software. This paper illustrated the application tactics of intelligent algorithm and travel time risk function on the Network Covering Location Problems by implementing of a stochastic travel time location problem solved by genetic algorithm.Fourthly, two location problems with coexistence of competitive and cooperative facilities are investigated. After introducing some backgrounds of locating facility in the target market where there have some alliance facilities, and giving some definition of model variables, a Maximal Covering Location Problem and a Set Covering Location Problem with coexistence of competitive and cooperative facilities are presented respectively. A solution strategy, as well as a numerical example based on a practical location project is proposed. The paper analyzes the model and algorithms with a variety of budget and market capacity constraints, as well as its possible results of the calculations.Fifthly, three Network Facility Covering Location Problems based on coopetition is scrutinized. After describing the coopetitive environment and defining the model variables, the paper scrutinizes the differences of earnings and costs among pure competition, partial cooperation and pure cooperation, and analyzes two kinds of coopetition problems which are two partners both require to cover all customers, the new entrants to cover part of the customers, with two models based on Set Covering Location Problem and Maximal Covering Location Problem, respectively, are proposed. Moreover, a coopetitive Maximal Covering Location model on basis of Pareto improvement is also developed, the Pareto improvement on the issues of investment and compensation involved in coopetitive facility location problems can be well handled by the model.Sixthly, a cooperation partner evaluation and selection problem on basis of brand-based competitive auto service facility location is introduced. According to the requirements of automotive industry and coopetition on location decision-making, an automotive service facility location coopetitive partner selection evaluation system is proposed. At same time, the definitions and significances of each index, as well as the issues need to be considered in the evaluation processes are illuminated. On account of the fact that the quantity of auto industry sales is enormously and the statistical procedure is time-consuming, an index-based algorithm of statistical samples for correlation analysis from mass data is proposed, and a coopetitive partner combination optimization model is also developed. In addition, the paper takes an East-China automobile company's coopetitive partner selection project as a case to illustrate the coopetitive location partner selection procedure and model application skills in automobile industryFinally, the paper 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.