Alfred Weber

Alfred Weber was a German economist who developed a theory of industrial location in his 1909 book, Theory of the Location of Industries. His theory, often called the location triangle, aimed to find the optimal site for production by considering the fixed locations of a market and two raw material sources. Weber's model analyzed the total costs of transporting raw materials to the production site and the finished product to the market. The weight of materials and the final commodity were key factors in determining transport costs and thus the production location. He also considered labor costs as a secondary factor in determining the ideal location.1