Simulated annealing algorithm for balanced allocation problem

This paper deals with the balanced allocation of customers to multiple third party logistics warehouses. The allocation problem generally deals with clustering of customers so as to achieve minimum total resource viz. cost or time. But the real challenge arises when it is required to strike a balance between the allocation while also minimizing the total cost or time. Since the problem develops to be non-deterministic polynomial-time hard, the paper uses simulated annealing approach to solve the problem. The balanced solution is achieved by using the min–max function. The effectiveness of the new algorithm is presented through simulation of large sets of problems.