A Review and Classification of Heuristic Algorithms for the Inventory Routing Problem

The inventory routing problem (IRP) is an integration of vehicle and management problems. In the recent years, it has increasingly drawn attention researchers because its potentially significant practical value. IRP classified as NP-hard since subsumes (VRP). This fact led to development many heuristic or metaheuristic approaches, although a small number exact methods have been introduced recently. Heuristic offer advantage shorter time scales, i.e., greater computational efficiency, on expense course accuracy results. immediate trigger for this study our concern about results validation, which debatable in early papers, only recently systematic effort create set optimally solved benchmark instances made. article presents solving basic variants found literature, stressing solution verification approach, rather than methodology algorithms. paper concludes with discussion quality performance assessment proposed