A computational comparison of several models for the exact solution of the capacity and distance constrained plant location problem

The Capacity and Distance Constrained Plant Location Problem is an extension of the discrete capacitated plant location problem, where the customers assigned to each plant have to be assigned to vehicles. In addition to the capacity constraints on the plants, there is a limit on the total distance traveled by each vehicle to serve its assigned customers by means of round trips. This paper presents several formulations for the problem and proposes different families of valid inequalities. The results of extensive computational experiments are presented and analyzed.