The Multi-Vehicle Cyclic Inventory Routing Problem: Formulation and a Metaheuristic Approach

• A Multi-Vehicle Cyclic Inventory Routing Problem (MV-CIRP) is studied. MV-CIRP the extension of Single-Vehicle CIRP (SV-CIRP). mixed integer nonlinear programming model formulated. Simulated Annealing algorithm proposed to solve both SV-CIRP and MV-CIRP. This paper presents a new variant which aims determine subset customers be visited, appropriate number vehicles used, corresponding cycle time route sequence, such that total cost (e.g. transportation, inventory, rewards) minimized. The formulated as mixed-integer model. We propose (SA) based problem. SA first tested on available benchmark (SV-CIRP) instances compared state-of-the-art algorithms. then optimization solver standard Iterated Local Search (MV-ILS) approach. Experimental results show able obtain 9 best known solutions when solving outperforms MV-ILS instances. Furthermore, insights in complexity are discussed illustrated.