In this article we propose, for any > 0, a 2(1+ )-approximation algorithm for a facility location problem with stochastic demands. At open facilities, inventory is kept such that arriving requests find a zero inventory with (at most) some pre-specified probability. The incurred costs are the expected transportation costs from the demand points to the facilities, the operating costs of the facil...

in this article, multiple-product pvrp with pickup and delivery that is used widely in goods distribution or other service companies, especially by railways, was introduced. a mathematical formulation was provided for this problem. each product had a set of vehicles which could carry the product and pickup and delivery could simultaneously occur. to solve the problem, two meta-heuristic methods...

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...

In this paper, a new practical solution approach based on randomized local search is presented for tackling a real-life inventory routing problem. Inventory routing refers to the optimization of transportation costs for the replenishment of customers’ inventories: based on consumption forecasts, the vendor organizes delivery routes. Our model takes into account pickups, time windows, drivers’ s...

The Two-Echelon Routing Problem constitutes a class of combinatorial optimization problems with applications in many different fields such as city logistic planning, intermodal transportation, postal and parcel delivery distribution systems and so on. This thesis contains: a survey of the main contributions related to the two-echelon routing, focusing on the Two-Echelon Location Routing Problem...

Vendor managed inventory replenishment is a business practice in which vendors monitor their customers’ inventories, and decide when and how much inventory should be replenished. The inventory routing problem addresses the coordination of inventory management and transportation. The ability to solve the inventory routing problem contributes to the realization of the potential savings in invento...

a comprehensive and integrated study of any supply chain (sc) environment is a vital requirement that can create various advantages for the sc owners. this consideration causes productive managing of the sc through its whole wide components from upstream suppliers to downstream retailers and customers.  on this issue, despite many valuable studies reported in the current literature, considerabl...

this research presents and solves a new mathematical model for school bus routing problem (sbrp). sbrp is a specific case of vehicle routing problem (vrp). despite prevalent models, this model includes location and routing simultaneously. besides, the vehicles are non-homogenous. in addition, instead of locating schools which are the depots, we consider locating bus stops that are mentioned &ap...