Facility Location

Facility Location Problem is the problem of selecting one or more facilities (warehouse, plant, store, distribution center, hospital, fire station) from a candidate set so they best serve a set of demand points. Classic variants: p-median (minimize demand-weighted total distance), p-center (minimize the farthest distance), set covering (cover each demand within a fixed distance), capacitated facility location (CFLP, with capacity constraints). It's a strategic-level decision; the investment shapes operations for 5–15 years. Starting with Alfred Weber's 1909 theory of the location of industries, formalized in graph-theoretic form by Hakimi in the 1960s, and today extended with stochastic demand, multi-echelon supply chains, and sustainability — one of the classical OR problems.