Utilization of Bat Algorithm for Solving Uncapacitated Facility Location Problem

The uncapacitated facility location problem (UFLP) is a location-based binary optimization problem investigated by using various methods in the literature. This study demonstrates a solution methodology for UFLP by a binary version of a novel swarm intelligence method namely bat algorithm (BA). BA is an optimization method employed for solving continuous optimization problems in the literature, suggested by inspiring the echolocation of microbats in nature. As implemented within some studies, sigmoid function is used in BA in order to obtain binary version of the algorithm (BBA) in this study, and then BBA is used for solving UFLP. According to the experimental results, BBA acquires successful results for solving UFLP in terms of solution quality.