Description
The Microsoft Excel workbook “FLP Spreadsheet Solver” is an open source tool for representing, solving, and visualising the results of Facility Location Problems (FLPs). It unifies Excel, public GIS, and metaheuristics. It can solve Facility Location Problems with up to 300 locations.
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FLP Spreadsheet Solver is a continuation of the VRP Spreadsheet Solver, and is based on the same design principles and similar worksheet and menu structures. It provides three objective functions: minimizing total cost, maximizing total demand covered, and minimizing the maximum service distance. It is capable of solving the p-Median, Uncapacitated and Capacitated Facility Location, Maximum Coverage Location, and vertex restricted p-Center problems, in addition to others. It provides the possibility of acquiring the coordinates of the location, the driving distances between the locations, and the static map covering the locations through the public GIS service of Bing Maps. Please consult their Terms of Service (http://www.microsoft.com/maps/product/terms.html) before using the FLP Spreadsheet Solver.
What’s new in Version 2.6:
- Multi-language support. Users can now set the language of the menu and the rest of the interface from the console worksheet. The available languages are: Turkish, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Arabic. As you may expect, I do not speak all these languages. The translations are from Google Translate, so expect minor (i.e. significant) inconsistencies. You can also add your own language or jargon, details are in the new User’s Manual. Special thanks to Rusuhi Cantay for his help with the multi-language support.
What’s new in Version 2.4:
- Populating the coordinates creates a small map in the Locations worksheet. This enables the user to spot coordinate errors before populating the distances.
- If some distances could not be populated due to a connection error, the next attempt only populates the missing distances.
What’s new in Version 2.1:
- Works in both Mac and Windows Office
- Custom ribbon for user interface
- Upgraded solution algorithm
- Minor bug fixes