Title: Effective local search approaches for the single-vehicle cyclic inventory routing problem

Authors: Yiqing Zhong; El-Houssaine Aghezzaf

Addresses: Department of Industrial Management, Ghent University, Technologiepark 903, 9052-Zwijnaarde, Belgium ' Department of Industrial Management, Ghent University, Technologiepark 903, 9052-Zwijnaarde, Belgium

Abstract: The single-vehicle cyclic inventory routing problem (SV-CIRP) is concerned with a cyclic distribution of a product from a single depot to a selected subset of retailers facing stable demands. If a retailer is selected for replenishment, the supplier collects a retailer-related reward. The objective is to select a subset of retailers to replenish, quantities to be delivered to each, and design delivery routes that minimise the expected total distribution and inventory costs while maximising the total collected rewards. The resulting distribution plan must prevent stockouts from occurring at each retailer. The underlying optimisation model for the SV-CIRP is formulated as a mixed integer program with linear constraints and a nonlinear objective function. An effective iterated local search based algorithm is developed to solve the problem. Various instances are generated to test the proposed algorithm. Numerical results show that it is very competitive and can find good quality solutions for the SV-CIRP in reasonable computational time.

Keywords: cyclic inventory routing; nonlinear mixed integer programming; heuristics; iterated local search; distribution planning; stockouts; optimisation models.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOI.2012.052179

International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics, 2012 Vol.7 No.4, pp.260 - 279

Published online: 27 Dec 2014 *

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