Atefeh Malekinezhad*, Ehsan Shirazi and M. B. AryanezhadDepartment of Industrial Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Sought Branch, Tehran Iran


Department of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Narmak, Tehran Iran


Designing distribution centers is normally formulated as a set covering problem where the primary objective is to minimize the number of connected facilities. However, there are other issues affecting our decision on selecting suitable distribution centers such as weather conditions, temperature, infrastructure facilities, etc. In this paper, we propose a multi-objective set covering technique where different objectives are considered in an integrated model. The objectives are in two parts of quantitative and qualitative. Two methods of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and TOPSIS are implemented to change the qualitative numbers into quantitative numbers. A utility function is implemented to convert two objectives into a single objective and the resulted model is solved using a regular mixed integer programming. The proposed model of this paper is implemented for a real-world case study of truck-industry and the results are analyzed in different scenarios.


DOI: j.msl.2010.01.002

Keywords: Set covering ,TOPSIS ,Multi-objective ,Distribution centers ,Supply chain management ,

How to cite this paper:

Engineering, D., Science, I & Iran, T. (2011). Atefeh Malekinezhad*, Ehsan Shirazi and M. B. AryanezhadDepartment of Industrial Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Sought Branch, Tehran Iran.Management Science Letters, 1(1), 73-80.


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