ABSTRACT
In this chapter, a mathematical formulation of the long range planning of locations and expansion of facilities for regional management is presented. An example involving regional management in the Boston metropolitan area for the period from 1970 to 2000 was taken from Fuertes et al. and solved by the heuristic procedure. In the MIT study, the solution proposed has a cost of $109.46 million and the cost of the author's solution is $117.78 million. The MIT study did not report the transportation costs and hence rough approximations for the costs were taken while solving the problem. It should be noted, however, that for the transportation costs and other data assumed, the solution obtained by the heuristic procedure developed in this chapter fell within $2.35 million for a 30-year period of less than 2.3% of total expenses. The computation of a lower bound on the optimal solution has been explained earlier.
