07-26-06

THIS FOLDER INCLUDES A SUBSET OF Fixed-Charge Transportation TESTBED PROBLEMS ORIGINALLY REPORTED IN:

	Sun., M., J.E. Aronson. , P.G. McKeown, D. Drinka. 1998. A tabu search heuristic procedure for
	the fixed charge transportation problem. European Journal of Operational Research 106 441-456.

THIS TESTBED PROBLEM WERE REGENERATED AND SOLVED BY THE TABU SEARCH CODE DEVELOPED IN THE STUDY ABOVE. 
ALSO THEY WERE SOLVED BY THE GHOST IMAGE PROCESSES METHOD AND CPLEX 9.0 AND REPORTED IN THE FOLLOWING STUDY:

	Gover, F., M. Amini, and G. Kochenberger. 2005. Parametreic ghost image processes for fixed-charge 
	problems: a study of transportation networks. Journal of Heuristics, 11, 307-336.


AS REPORTED IN THE SECOND STUDY, THE TESTBED PROBLEM INCLUDES A SET OF 12 "EASY" FCTPs AND 120 "DIFFICULT"
FCTPs.  

FOR YOUR QESTIONS, PLEASE CONTACT:

	MEHDI AMINI, PH.D.
	PROFESSOR, MANAGEMENT SCIENCE, AND
	ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, FEXED CENTER FOR SUMPPLY CHANIN MANAGEMENT
	FEDEX INSTITUTE TECHNOLOGY
	THE UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS
	MEMPHIS, TN 38152
	MAMINI@MEMPHIS.EDU

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FORMAT OF FCTPs TESTBED PROBLEMS:

IN THE SECOND STUDY, THE GHOST IMAGE PROCESSES METHOD WAS IMPLEMENTED WITHIN A TWO-MULTIPLIER GENERALIZED 
NETWORK (FCGN2) CODE.  SO, THE TESTBED PROBLEM FILES ARE FORMATTED FOR THE FCGN2 CODE.  

EACH FILE IS ORGANIZED AS FOLLOW:

LINE 1: PROBLEM ID
LINE 2: PROBLEM ID, NUMBER OF SOURCE NOMDE (m), NUMBER OF SINK NODES(n)
LINE 3: "ARCS" INDICATES THAT DATA REGRADING EACH ARC FOLLOWS
LINE 4 THORUGH mxn+3 INCLUDES ARC DATA:
	FROM-NODE, TO-NODE, VARIABLE COST, FIXED COST, LOWER BOUND, 
        UPPER BOUND, FROM-NODE MULTIPLIER, TO-NODE MULTIPLIER, AND F

NOTE:
	A. UPPER BOUND FOR ARC (i, j) IS SET TO BE EQUAL TO MIN{SUPPLY(i), DEMAND(j)}.
	B. FOR SOLVING A PROBLEM WITH OTHER SOLVERS, NONE GENERALLIZED NETWORK BASED
           CODES, THE LAST THREE COLUMNS MAY BE IGNORED.

LINE: mxn+4: "S" INDICATES THAT DATA REGRADING SUPPLY NODES FOLLOWS
LINE: mxn+5 THROUGH (m+n+5)+m INCLUDES SUPPLY NODES DATA:
	    SUPPPLY NODE NUMBER, SUPPLY
LINE: (mxn+5)+m+1: "D" INDICATES THAT DATA REGARDING DEMAND NODES FOLLOWS
LINE: (mxn+5)+m+2 THROUGH (mxn+5)+m+n+2 INCLUDES DEMAND NODE DATA:
	    DEMAND NODE NUMBER, DEMAND 
LINE: (mxn+5)+m+n+3: "END" INDICATES END OF PROBLEM DATA FILE.
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