capacitated

Capacitated is an adjective used to describe systems, processes, or models that are limited by capacity. A capacitated entity has a maximum amount it can handle, store, or transport at once, and operations must respect this limit. The term is commonly used in logistics, manufacturing, and optimization to distinguish constrained from unconstrained models.

In mathematics and operations research, capacitated problems impose explicit constraints on resource flows or assignments. Capacity limits bound the amount of resource that can pass through a network edge, the number of customers a facility can serve, or the load a vehicle can carry. In typical formulations, the sum of flows on an edge does not exceed its capacity and the total demand assigned to a facility does not exceed its capacity.

Prominent capacitated optimization problems include the capacitated facility location problem (CFLP), where the goal is to open facilities to serve demand at minimum cost subject to facility capacities, and the capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP), which assigns customers to routes without exceeding vehicle capacities. Capacitated scheduling and capacitated transportation problems are also studied.

Capacitated models are widely applied in supply chain design, logistics planning, and network design. They provide more realistic representations than uncapacitated models but can be computationally more challenging, often requiring specialized algorithms and heuristics.

See also

- capacity

- facility location problem

- vehicle routing problem

- network flow

- linear programming