Abstract
In order to be competitive companies need to take advantage of synergistic interactions between different decision areas. Two of these are related to the distribution and inventory management processes. Inventory-Routing Problems (IRPs) arise when inventory and routing decisions must be made simultaneously, which yields a difficult combinatorial optimization problem. In this paper, we propose a branch-and-cut algorithm for the exact solution of several classes of IRPs. Specifically, we solve the multi-vehicle IRP with a homogeneous and a heterogeneous fleet, the IRP with transshipment options, and the IRP with added consistency features. We perform an extensive computational analysis on benchmark instances.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 558-565 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Computers and Operations Research |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Feb 2013 |
Funding
This work was partly supported by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council under grant 39682-10. We also thank the RQCHP (Réseau québécois de calcul de haute performance) for providing parallel computing facilities. The authors thank Jean-François Cordeau for his advice on an earlier version of the manuscript. Thanks are due to an anonymous referee who provided valuable comments on the first version of this paper.
Keywords
- Branch-and-cut
- Consistency
- Inventory management
- Inventory-routing
- Multi-vehicle
- Transshipment
- Vehicle routing
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Computer Science
- Modelling and Simulation
- Management Science and Operations Research