One of the most important points in a supply chain is customer-driven modeling, which reduces the bullwhip effect in the supply chain, as well as the costs of investment on the inventory and efficient transshipment of the products. Their homogeneity is reflected in the Inventory Routing Problem, which is a combination of distribution and inventory management. This paper expands the classical In...

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...

Vendor managed resupply is an emerging trend in logistics and refers to a situation in which a supplier manages the inventory replenishment of its customers. Vendors save on distribution cost by being able to better coordinate deliveries to different customers, and customers do not have to dedicate resources to inventory management anymore. We present and discuss the inventory routing problem. ...

To my wife, for her love and patience. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Dr. Martin Savelsbergh for serving as my thesis advisor, and providing invaluable advice and support. There is no way that I could have completed this thesis without his excellent insights, invaluable suggestions, and endless encouragement. C. White III for serving as members of my com...

Inventory management and transportation issues are very important problems in distribution companies. Simultaneous l optimization of these problems realizes significant savings for all partners of the supply chain. One of the problems that should be addressed in the scope of simultaneous sl optimization is the inventory routing problem (IRP). IRP deals with how to manage the supply goods from o...

Abstract In the Inventory Routing Problem, customer demand is satisfied from inventory which replenished with capacitated vehicles. The objective to minimize total routing and holding cost over a time horizon. If customers are located relatively close each other, one has opportunity satisfy of by stored at another nearby customer. optimization replenishments, this option can be included lower c...

The purpose of this paper is to determine the route of the vehicle routing problem with backhauls (VRPB), delivering new items and picking up the reused items or wastes, and resolve the inventory control decision problem simultaneously since the regular VRPB does not. Both the vehicle routing decision for delivery and pickup, and the inventory control decision affect each other and must be cons...