A Hub Location Model with Hierarchical Allocation and Limited Demand for Post Network

Abstract

This paper proposes a new mathematical model for designing and planning postal parcels carriage and postal networks. The objective of postal network designing is to determine the location, size and connection between the postal stations in a city, province or country. In this paper, a kind of multiple locations-allocations hub problem with limited capacity in collecting, distributing and broadcasting by the hub in a network with the desired interval structure is studied. A multi-commodity network transportation with demand, transportation cost, possible capacity and three kind of hubs is considered in a long-term time horizon. Since the mathematical modeling is a non-linear mixed integer programming problem, the aim is to decide on hub kinds and on the points that should be assigned to the established hubs. Numerical experiments demonstrate the significance and applicability of the proposed model for actual decision-making problems.