Abstract
In this paper we study a problem that arose while planning the delivery of perishable goods, such as newspapers or foodstuff, in urban areas. The customers require the delivery of several different products within specified time windows. Given a production schedule, facilities for cross docking and a vehicle fleet, the problem is to create a cost effective delivery plan. We propose a heuristic that maintains product availability, and simultaneously, generates an efficient routing schedule. Product availability is maintained through a preflow-push algorithm performed on a time-space facility network, while the routing is guided by simulated annealing. The heuristic was tested on a set of specifically created test instances and on standard 2E-LRP instances by Prodhon.
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Notes
This is done for the sake of simplicity. Loading and unloading times can be accounted in several ways, e.g. by adjusting facility timelines.
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The work presented here was supported by the Serbian Ministry of Education and Science (Projects III 44006 and OI 174018).
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Bala, K., Brcanov, D. & Gvozdenović, N. Two-echelon location routing synchronized with production schedules and time windows. Cent Eur J Oper Res 25, 525–543 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10100-016-0463-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10100-016-0463-6