Title: General forms of the quadratic assignment problem

Authors: Salih O. Duffuaa; Chawki A. Fedjki

Addresses: Department of Systems Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia ' Department of Systems Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia

Abstract: In this paper, a general model has been formulated for facility location. The proposed model allows for locating several facilities in a single location, and as such, it is therefore a generalisation of the well-known quadratic assignment problem (QAP) and other variants. The general model has a wide range of applications in facility location, operations research and business. A branch-and-bound algorithm is developed for the generalised quadratic semi-assignment problem (GQSAP), which is a special form of the general model. The branch-and-bound algorithm is based on a modified version of the well-known Gilmore bound. Computational results are presented to corroborate the theoretical model developed here.

Keywords: QAP; quadratic assignment problem; facility location; clustering problem; QSAP; quadratic semi-assignment problem; operational research; branch and bound.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2012.045186

International Journal of Operational Research, 2012 Vol.13 No.2, pp.185 - 199

Published online: 11 Jan 2015 *

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