Location-Allocation Modeling

Anyone who has ever wondered how, exactly, it is decided just where things like new schools, new stores or other facilities will be located has considered a problem of location-allocation.  In making these decisions, which mainly involve analysis of things like travel cost, distance, and customer locations, a multitude of factors must be considered, and locations are decided upon based on their suitability.

Above is a comparison of market area assignment to distribution centers- both before and after the location-allocation model.  Each of the 22 distribution center points serves the market areas, based upon customer locations.  After the location analysis, the market area assignments are improved, as the number of customers within each and the distribution centers they use have been optimized according to our specified criteria.