A Parallel Algorithm for the Facility Location Problem Applied to Oil and Gas Logistics

Abstract

One of the most relevant problems at large organizations is the choice of locations for establishing facilities, distribution centers or retail stores. This logistics issue involves a strategic decision which may cause significant impact at the effective cost of the product. There are several papers tackling this issue, known as the Facility Location Problem. The objective of this paper is to analyze applicable heuristics previously developed by other authors and to define a mathematical formulation to the fuel distribution industry in Brazil. It started from the analysis of the upstream and downstream flow in practice in this segment and the respective transportation cost formation, including taxes. Thereby, we propose the use of parallel programming techniques using the Message Passing Interface (MPI) with the objective of reducing transportation costs in a reasonable execution time. Results show that this approach provides interesting performance gains, when compared to serial execution.