Developing Approaches for Locating and Creating Agricultural Service Centers using Location-Allocation Model

In this research, different strategies were developed to establish an agricultural service center in terms of the number and capacity of services provided. A separate location model was developed to locate agricultural service centers for each solution. For this purpose, the location-allocation model was used to develop the location models and the branch and bound algorithm to solve the models. The main purpose of these models was to minimize the cost of deploying agricultural service centers (including start-up and shipping costs to the point of service). In the model solved in this study, measures such as cost of establishment, cost of service start-up, distance between service center to customers, transportation costs and number of trips required to meet each customer's demand were considered. In this study, in order to show the practical capabilities of developed methods and models, a case study was conducted in Razan city, in Hamadan Province. After implementation of the location-allocation model, the optimal locations to establish agricultural service centers in all  villages of the area were determined separately. The results of this study can be used by national and regional managers and planners in locating agricultural service and planning centers to provide services to agricultural users.