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A 3-approximation algorithm for the facility location problem with uniform capacities

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Abstract

We consider the facility location problem where each facility can serve at most U clients. We analyze a local search algorithm for this problem which uses only the operations of add, delete and swap and prove that any locally optimum solution is no more than 3 times the global optimum. This improves on a result of Chudak and Williamson who proved an approximation ratio of \({3+2\sqrt{2}}\) for the same algorithm. We also provide an example which shows that any local search algorithm which uses only these three operations cannot achieve an approximation guarantee better than 3.

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Correspondence to Naveen Garg.

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Work done as part of the “Approximation Algorithms” partner group of MPI-Informatik, Germany.

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Aggarwal, A., Louis, A., Bansal, M. et al. A 3-approximation algorithm for the facility location problem with uniform capacities. Math. Program. 141, 527–547 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10107-012-0565-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10107-012-0565-4

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