Information Visualization in Facility Location and Vehicle Routing Decisions

Abstract

Facility location and vehicle routing are amongst the most important logistic decisions in today’s organizations. These aspects are intertwined and, in some cases, should be addressed in an integrated way (giving rise to the location-routing approach). A decision support tool that can make easier the visualization (and editing) of information regarding these problems is becoming increasingly important as: it enables to further understand the problem at hand; and, at the same time, it fosters better communication of the decisions in a way easier to understand by the general public. This paper presents some concepts for information visualization on the problems arisen by the aforementioned decisions, which have been incorporated in a decision support tool and tested using usability evaluation methods.