Title: Robust cooperative maximal covering location problem: a case study of the locating Tele-Taxi stations in Tabriz, Iran

Authors: Hassan Rezazadeh; Salim Moghtased-Azar; Meysam Shafiei Kisomi; Rouhollah Bagheri

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Urmia, Urmia, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Urmia, Urmia, Iran ' Department of System Management, College of Management and Accounting, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: Today, maximising the number of steady customers and consistency in meeting their needs are two important factors affecting the profitability of companies. Therefore, researchers are trying to model, study and analyse factors affecting the businesses. To this end and with regard to covering problem applications, this problem is inclusively studied in the operations research (OR) literature. This article proposes a novel maximal covering location problem (MCLP) in which different factors (capacity of facilities, budget, number of available facilities in different types) have been considered. To provide a real case problem, locating Tele-Taxi stations in Tabriz, Iran have been studied. Moreover, to analyse the effects of uncertainty in the rate of demand in each demand point and capacity of facilities as undeniable facts of real-world, the robust counterpart of the proposed model is developed. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis on the constant perturbation for uncertain parameters has been conducted.

Keywords: facility location; maximal covering location problem; MCLP; robust optimisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2018.089247

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2018 Vol.29 No.2, pp.163 - 183

Received: 12 Sep 2015
Accepted: 06 May 2016
Published online: 11 Jan 2018 *

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