A k-product uncapacitated facility location problem

A k-product uncapacitated facility location problem can be described as follows. There is a set of demand points where clients are located and a set of potential sites where facilities of unlimited capacities can be set up. There are k different kinds of products. Each client needs to be supplied with k kinds of products by a set of k different facilities and each facility can be set up to supply only a distinct product with a non-negative fixed cost determined by the product it intends to supply. There is a non-negative cost of shipping goods between each pair of locations. These costs are assumed to be symmetric and satisfy the triangle inequality. The problem is to select a set of facilities to be set up and their designated products and to find an assignment for each client to a set of k facilities so that the sum of the setup costs and the shipping costs is minimized. In this paper, an approximation algorithm within a factor of 2k + 1 of the optimum cost is presented. Assuming that fixed setup costs are zero, we give a 2k - 1 approximation algorithm for the problem. In addition we show that for the case k = 2, the problem is NP-complete when the cost structure is general and there is a 2-approximation algorithm when the costs are symmetric and satisfy the triangle inequality. The algorithm is shown to produce an optimal solution if the 2-product uncapacitated facility location problem with no fixed costs happens to fall on a tree graph. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.