GIS 5935 - Lab 6 - Location-Allocation Modeling

This weeks lab was our final assignment under the Networks topic.  I really have enjoyed this topic's assignments and have a much better appreciation for these analyses and their broad uses.  As with previous assignments we familiarized ourselves with the topic by completing Exercise 9 of the Network Analyst Tutorial in Part A of the assignment.  Part B had us apply this newly acquired knowledge to use a location-allocation analysis to optimize the reassignment of market areas to distribution centers.  First we used the Network Analyst location-allocation model to determine which distribution center best served each customer.

Location-Allocation Network Analysis - Which Distribution Center Best Serves Each Customer?

Inspecting the above map we could see that a number of customers would be better served by distribution centers that did not fall in their market area grouping.  In order to further analyze which market centers would be better served by a different distribution center we performed a series of table manipulations by using spatial and table joins and using the Summary Statistics tool as well as the Summarize menu option in the opened Attribute Table.  These statistical calculations enabled us to determine which distribution center was responsible for the majority of customers in each market area.  Using this criteria we reassigned 13 market areas to different distribution centers.  There were some weaknesses in this analysis.  Some market areas could be served by two distribution centers because they both served an equal number of customers.  Another issue was at least one market area was bifurcated and the reassignment didn't make sense for the entire market area but rather a portion of it.  Ideally, this market should have been separated into two distinct market areas.

Location-Allocation Analysis of Market Area Assignments to Distribution Centers

This was probably my most favorite lab assignment of this class thus far.  While the table manipulations were cumbersome and confusing at first, the overall capabilities of this network analysis method were impressive.