Solving the Location Problem of Printers in a University Campus Using p-Median Location Model and AnyLogic Simulation

Abstract

The location decision on service facilities is of significant importance in determining the accessibility of the service provided. Due to this reason, it has been extensively focused over the past decades by both researchers and practitioners. This paper investigates a novel two-phase hybrid method combining both optimization model and agent-based simulation in order to solve the location problem of printers at a building of UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Narvik campus. In the first phase, the p-median location problem is employed to select the optimal locations of printers from a number of pre-determined candidate points so that the total travel distance by both employees and students can be minimized. In the second phase, both the original and the optimal location plans of printers are tested, validated and visualized with the help of AnyLogic simulation package. The result of the case study shows, however, the mathematically optimized solution may not yield a better performance under a realistic environment due to the simplification made and incapability to deal with the randomness. This has revealed that AnyLogic simulation can be used as a powerful tool to validate and visualize the result obtained from an optimization model and to make suggestions on the improvement.

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