Application

Abstract

: A Willamette Valley farm cooperative was interested in evaluattng locations for their canning facilities based on the criterion of minimizing aggregate distance to their contract farms. This location problem presented an excellent opportunity for a geographic application project as it was characterized by one, a spatfal distribution of farms and two, the need to minimize one variable, distance. The projects aim was to provide a methodology utilizing location-allocation analysis performed by a geographic tool, the computer, to solve the specific facility location problems of the cooperative. Since the growers were constrained to existing roads in transporting their produce to the canning facilities, the problem became one of minimizing distance over a route network. Two location-allocation computer programs, designed to solve location problems on a network were called upon to generate locations for the canning facilities. The cooperative was presented with detailed information about one very important variable, distance minimization, to be considered along with the many complex variables weighing in their ultimate locational decision.