Title: The generalised dwell point location problem

Authors: Trevor S. Hale, Michael E. Hanna, Faizul Huq

Addresses: Department of Management, Marketing, and Business Administration, University of Houston – Downtown, Houston, Texas 77002, USA. ' Department of Economics, Finance, Marketing, and Decision Sciences, University of Houston – Clear Lake, Houston, Texas 77058, USA. ' College of Business, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701, USA; IRMAPE, Groupe ESC Pau, France

Abstract: This research presents a generalised procedure to determine the optimal dwell point location for an arbitrary service device within a defined region. Similar to some existing dwell point location research for material handling systems, this study models a generic system that responds to demands for service from a region defined by a bi-variate random vector over some predefined service region as well as from a particular point analogous to the Input/Output (I/O) location for an arbitrary material handling system. A step-by-step procedure is delineated for determining the optimal dwell point location for a generic system. Extensions to the model for systems with multiple point (I/O) locations as well as for systems with multiple service regions are also presented.

Keywords: dwell point location; facilities location; location science; multiple service regions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2009.024072

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2009 Vol.4 No.4, pp.446 - 454

Published online: 25 Mar 2009 *

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