Solving the Inventory Location-Routing Problem can been seen as an approach to optimize both a supply chain design and its operations costs. Assumptions consider that vehicles might visit more than one retailer per route and that inventory management decisions are included for a multi-depot, multi-retailer system with storage capacity over a discrete time planning horizon. The problem is to det...

Generally, the inventory routing problem occurs in a supply chain where customers consider the supplier responsible for inventory replenishment. In this situation, the supplier finds the answer to questions regarding the time and quantity of delivery to the customer as well as the sequence of customers in the routes. Considering the effect of production decisions on answering these questions, t...

Title of Dissertation: ONLINE INVENTORY REPLENISHMENT AND FLEET ROUTING DECISIONS UNDER REAL-TIME INFORMATION Ricardo Giesen, Ph.D., 2007 Dissertation Directed By: Professor Hani S. Mahmassani, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Logistics managers rely on increasingly sophisticated technologies to track demand and associated inventories, allowing rapid response to meet anticipated d...

In this paper we present a model and solution procedures of the Inventory Routing Problem (IRP) encountered in vending machine supply chains working under vendor-managed inventory (VMI) scheme. The new IRP model is built based on the existing Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time-windows (PVRPTW). The model will be referred to as the Integrated Inventory and Periodic Vehicle Routing Proble...

This paper introduces a green inventory routing problem with a heterogeneous fleet which extends the conventional inventory routing problem by considering environmental impacts and heterogeneous vehicles. A comprehensive objective is proposed, which minimizes the sum of inventory cost and routing cost, where the latter includes driver wage, vehicle fixed cost, fuel and emission costs, in which ...

This paper examines the cost-reduction effect of “postponed” routing decisions in a two-echelon supply chain. When a delivery vehicle leaves the warehouse with system replenishment quantities, it sequentially makes routing decisions to choose the next retailer to visit. To measure this effect this paper studies combined vehicle routing and inventoryallocation policies designed to minimize total...

in any supply chain, distribution planning of products is of great importance to managers. with effective and flexible distribution planning, mangers can increase the efficiency of time, place, and delivery utility of whole supply chain. in this paper, inventory routing problem (irp) is applied to distribution planning of perishable products in a supply chain. the studied supply chain is compos...

The need for integration in supply chain management leads us to consider the coordination of two logistic planning functions: transportation and inventory. The coordination of these activities can be an extremely important source of competitive advantage in supply chain management. The battle for cost reduction can involve finding the equilibrium between transportation and inventory management ...

PRAXAIR (www.praxair.com) is a large industrial gases company with about 60 production facilities and over 10,000 customers across North America. PRAXAIR recently negotiated a policy with its customers in which PRAXAIR is in charge of managing its customers’ inventories. Customers will no longer be calling PRAXAIR to request a delivery. Instead, PRAXAIR will determine who receives a delivery ea...