Hybrid evolutionary algorithm with extreme machine learning fitness function evaluation for two-stage capacitated facility location problem

Abstract: This paper considers the two-stage capacitated facility location problem (TSCFLP) in which products manufactured in plants are delivered to customers via storage depots. Customer demands are satisfied subject to limited plant production and limited depot storage capacity. The objective is to determine the locations of plants and depots in order to minimize the total cost including the fixed cost and transportation cost. A hybrid evolutionary algorithm (HEA) with genetic operations and local search is proposed. To avoid the expensive calculation of fitness of population in terms of computational time, the HEA uses extreme machine learning to approximate the fitness of most of the individuals. Moreover, two heuristics based on the characteristic of the problem is incorporated to generate a good initial population. Computational experiments are performed on two sets of test instances from the recent literature. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated and analyzed. Compared with the state-of-the-art genetic algorithm, the proposed algorithm can find the optimal or near-optimal solutions in a reasonable computational time.