A combined vehicle routing and inventory allocation problem. (English) Zbl 0552.90026

Federgruen, Awi; Zipkin, Paul

Oper. Res. 32, 1019-1037 (1984).

This paper addresses the combined problem of allocating a scarce resource among several locations, and planning deliveries using a fleet of vehicles. Demands are random, and holding and storage costs must be considered in the decision along with transportation costs. It is shown how to extend some of the available methods for the deterministic vehicle routing problem to this case. Computational results using one such adaptation show that the algorithm is fast enough for practical work and that substantial cost savings can be achieved with this approach.

Reviewer: S.K.Goyal

MSC:

90B05	Inventory, storage, reservoirs
90C09	Boolean programming
65K05	Numerical mathematical programming methods

Keywords:

algorithm resource allocation; logistics; inventory allocation random demands; scarce resource; several locations; planning deliveries; fleet of vehicles; vehicle routing