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The hub location problem with comparisons of compact formulations: A note

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  • Setiawan, Fran
  • Bektaş, Tolga
  • Iris, Çağatay

Abstract

Hub location is a planning problem that involves choosing, from a set of nodes, a subset to designate as hub facilities, linking the hubs to the remaining nodes using a hub-and-spoke structure, and routing of flows on the resulting network. This paper presents theoretical and computational comparisons of the fundamental compact formulations of the p-hub location problem (p-HLP) for three allocation strategies, namely single, multiple and r-allocation. Our theoretical results show that path-based formulations offer the strongest linear programming relaxation. The computational experiments, run on three prominent datasets using a state-of-the-art commercial solver indicate that, flow-based formulations generally solve the largest number of instances to optimality and require the shortest solution time, especially for large-scale instances.

Suggested Citation

  • Setiawan, Fran & Bektaş, Tolga & Iris, Çağatay, 2025. "The hub location problem with comparisons of compact formulations: A note," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transe:v:194:y:2025:i:c:s1366554524004939
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2024.103902
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    References listed on IDEAS

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