The suitable location of facilities is a key factor in achieving efficient supply systems both in the public and in the private sectors. Nowadays, most public and non-profit bodies offering essential services (such as healthcare or environmental management facilities) are suffering from severe funding limitations and budget cuts. In handling this scenario, the decision-makers must take any possible action to ensure facility networks can keep operating and providing a minimum required service level, even though, due to financial reasons, some facilities might be downsized (and their operating hours reduced) or, in extreme cases, closed down. Any reduction that is made might limit the service level, hence increasing the congestion level of the system. For essential services, this means an increase in demand’s waiting times for server availability; as such, users could consider moving to another available facility or, at a certain point, leave the system.
This study aims to develop a mathematical model for reorganising the operations of existing facility networks which encounter budget reductions issues. Due to reorganisational actions, the network size might be reduced. Hence, this study is also concerned with the effect of the reorganisation, i.e. the congestion problems which might derive from the changes imposed onto the network. Limited studies were found in the area of reorganisation of facilities’ operations, especially in a scenario of supply shortage problem. Moreover, no study considered congestion problem as part of reorganisation effect. Hence, this study proposed a dynamic mathematical model using a multi-period logic as the main approach to solve the reorganisation problem. The proposed model was adapted and used to solve two real-world case studies from the City of Sheffield (UK): the first one concerned with the rationalisation of Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRC); the second one devoted to the organisation of General Practitioners (GP) Facilities. Both types of facilities are currently dealing with budget limitations issues.
The contribution of this thesis is twofold. First of all, the effect of reorganisational actions on the networks was also considered and integrated, through explicit consideration of congestion issues by means of a novel multi-period model which was proposed in order to solve facility networks reorganisation problems. As such, this work provides an enrichment of the literature related to reorganisation problems of existing facility networks; which not many authors have explored. Secondly, such model was applied to two real-world cases faced by local authorities and other planning bodies; through these implementations, the study also contributed to practical problem-solving issues.