Distribution network design (DND) attempts to integrate tactical issues such as inventory policies and/or vehicle routing decisions with strategic ones such as the problem of locating facilities and allocate customers to such facilities. When inventory policy decision making is considered the problem is also known as inventory location modelling (ILM) problem. During the last two decades, mathe...

Facility location, inventory control, and vehicle routes scheduling are critical and highly related problems in the design of logistics system for e-business. Meanwhile, the return ratio in Internet sales was significantly higher than in the traditional business. Many of returned merchandise have no quality defects, which can reenter sales channels just after a simple repackaging process. Focus...

One of the most important problems for distribution companies is to find the best locations for depots and to find proper routes for transportation vehicles and to optimize supply network. This study intends to develop a model for the problem of location-routing in post offices. So, a new Bi-Objective Location-Routing Problem for Locating Town Post Office and Routing Parcels is defined. This pr...

Although evolutionary algorithms have often been used to address VRPs and VRPTWs [1], applications to other routing problems such as period routing and inventory routing are less common. In this paper, a versatile hybrid evolutionary algorithm is developed that can be used for cyclic inventory routing and a variety of capacitated and periodic vehicle routing problems. First, a random insertion ...

in this paper, the capacitated location-routing problem with fuzzy demands (clrp-fd) is considered. the clrp-fd is composed of two well-known problems: facility location problem and vehicle routing problem. the problem has many real-life applications of which some have been addressed in the literature such as management of hazardous wastes and food and drink distribution. in clrp-fd, a set of c...

In this work, the capacitated location-routing problem with simultaneous pickup and delivery (CLRP-SPD) is considered. This problem is a more realistic case of the capacitated location-routing problem (CLRP) and belongs to the reverse logistics of the supply chain. The problem has many real-life applications of which some have been addressed in the literature such as management of liquid petrol...

Supplying of blood and blood products is one of the most challenging issues in the healthcare system since blood is as extremely perishable and vital good and donation of blood is a voluntary work. In this paper, we propose a two-stage stochastic selective-covering-inventory-routing (SCIR) model to supply whole blood under uncertainty. Here, set of discrete scenarios are used to display uncerta...

This paper considers a single-sourcing network design problem for a three-level supply chain. For the first time, a novel mathematical model is presented considering risk-pooling, the inventory existence at distribution centers (DCs) under demand uncertainty, the existence of several alternatives to transport the product between facilities, and routing of vehicles from distribution centers to c...

Two types of decisions that directly affect the performance of a distribution system is the vehicle routing and inventory assignment. These problems have been studied separately for many years. The inventory routing problem (IRP) is integration of above mentioned distribution problems. In the other words, IRP assumes each customer maintains a local inventory of a product and consumes a certain ...