Abstract
This paper considers a multi-product short sea inventory-routing problem in which a heterogeneous fleet of ships transports multiple products from production sites to consumption sites in a continuous time framework. A many-to-many distribution structure is taken into account, which makes it extremely hard to even compute feasible solutions. We propose an iterative two-phase hybrid matheuristic called Hybrid Cargo Generating and Routing (HCGR) to solve the problem. In the first phase the inventory-routing problem is converted into a ship routing and scheduling problem by generating cargoes subject to inventory limits through the use of mathematical programming. In the second phase, an adaptive large neighborhood search solves the resulting ship routing and scheduling problem. The HCGR heuristic iteratively modifies the generated cargoes based on information obtained during the process. The proposed heuristic is compared with an exact algorithm on small size instances; computational results are also presented on larger and more realistic instances.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 775-788 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | European Journal of Operational Research |
| Volume | 252 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Aug 2016 |
Funding
This research was carried out with financial support from the Research Council of Norway through the DOMinant II project, and from the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council under grant 39682-10. This support is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are due to the referees for their valuable comments.
Keywords
- Adaptive large neighborhood search
- Inventory-routing
- Many-to-many distribution problem
- Maritime transportation
- Supply chain management
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Computer Science
- Modelling and Simulation
- Management Science and Operations Research
- Information Systems and Management