W analyze the problem of optimal location of a set of facilities in the presence of stochastic demand and congestion. Customers travel to the closest facility to obtain service; the problem is to determine the number, locations, and capacity of the facilities. Under rather general assumptions (spatially distributed continuous demand, general arrival and service processes, and nonlinear location...

The stochastic location-inventory network design model with risk pooling considers the distribution network design problem in which all the retailers face uncertain demand. The riskpooling benefits can be achieved by allowing some of the retailers to operate as distribution centers (DCs) for other retailers to commit a given service level. The target is to minimize the expected total cost of DC...

PROBLEM ROBERT S. MAIER AND DANIEL L. STEINy Abstract. Consider a two-dimensional continuous-time dynamical system, with an attracting fixed point S. If the deterministic dynamics are perturbed by white noise (random perturbations) of strength , the system state will eventually leave the domain of attraction of S. We analyse the case when, as ! 0, the exit location on the boundary @ is increasi...

We study a strategic facility location problem under uncertainty. The uncertainty associated with future events is modeled by defining alternative future scenarios with probabilities. We present a new model which minimizes the expected regret with respect to an endogenously selected subset of worst-case scenarios whose collective probability of occurrence is exactly 1-α. We demonstrate the effe...

Regarding the stochastic solution schemes, techniques based on Genetic Algorithms (GAs) were proposed initially. Benqlilou et al. (2004) applied the GA toolbox of MATLAB program to solve the design and retrofit of reliable SNs, and Gerkens and Heyen (2005) presented two ways of parallelizing the classic GA to reduce the solution time. A hybrid procedure was developed by Carnero et al. (2005a) t...

Increased uncertainty is one of the characteristics of product recovery networks. In particular the strategic design of their logistic infrastructure has to take uncertain information into account. In this paper we present stochastic programming based approaches by which a deterministic location model for product recovery network design may be extended to explicitly account for the uncertaintie...

Numerous methods exist and were developed for global radiation forecasting. The two most popular types are the numerical weather predictions (NWP) and the predictions using stochastic approaches. This article presents a methodology for determining the best method to use, according to a rule related to the spatial resolution, temporal step and location. We propose to compute a parameter noted  ...

This article provides an introduction to approximation algorithms in stochastic optimization models arising in various application domains, including central areas of operations management, such as scheduling, facility location, vehicle routing problems, inventory and supply chain management and revenue management. Unfortunately, these models are very hard to solve to optimality both in theory ...