thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. March 17, 2015. / A two-level facility location problem (FLP) arose in the transport network of maize crop in
Tanzania has been studied. The three layers, namely, production centers (PCs), distribution
centers (DCs) and customer points (CPs) are considered in the two-level FLP. The stochastic
e ect on the two-level FLP due to rainfall in the network links, between the DCs and CPs,
has been studied. The
ow of maize crop from PCs to CPs through DCs is designed at
a minimum cost under deterministic and stochastic scenarios. The three decisions made
simultaneously are: to determine the locations of DCs (including number of DCs), allocation
of CPs to the selected DCs, allocation of selected DCs to PCs, and to determine the amount
of maize crop transported from PCs to DCs and then from DCs to CPs.
We have modelled the problem and generate results by optimizing the model with respect
to optimal location-allocation strategies. We have considered two networks, the existing
network and an extended network. In the existing network there are four PCs, ve DCs
and ninety three CPs. In the extended network three additional DCs are considered. For
the modelling purpose we have used the rainfall data from 2007 - 2010 in each week for
17 weeks. The optimized results for the existing network have shown improvements in cost
saving compared to the manually operated existing network. In the extended network, the
results have shown much more e cient and cost saving distribution system compared to the
results of the existing network.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/18589 |
| Date | 17 March 2015 |
| Creators | Sima, Said Athuman |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
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