Heuristic Algorithms for Optimization of Zone Based Time Oriented Distribution Networks

Due to the recent changes of the European market including the opening up of Eastern Europe and its associated logistical (distribution) consequences, the economically significant question of reorganization of goods distribution networks represents an increasing problem for companies operating in Europe. The existing concepts indicate many weak points because of insufficient consideration of real, nonlinear storage and transportation costs, especially zone oriented transportation costs, and underlying strategies behind the distribution structure. In addition, the existing concepts are mostly limited to the optimization of only one warehousing level and they do not consider the important factor of time. The consideration of real conditions incl. simultaneous optimization of multiple distribution echelons increases the complexity enormously. The computational implementation of the following contribution promoted by the DFG (Lu 373/18-2) bases on application of heuristic optimization, i.e. Simulated Annealing, Evolutionary Strategies, Genetic Algorithms, and Tabu Search for solving this complex optimization problem. KEYWORD: Heuristic Algorithms, Facility Locations, Distribution Networks, Nonlinear Optimization