Title: Cyclic scheduling of multiple tours with multiple frequencies for a single vehicle

Authors: Birger Raa, El-Houssaine Aghezzaf, Wout Dullaert

Addresses: Department of Management Information Science and Operations Management, Ghent University, Tweekerkenstraat 2, 9000 Gent, Belgium. ' Department of Industrial Management, Ghent University, Technologiepark 903, 9052 Zwijnaarde, Belgium. ' Institute of Transport and Maritime Management Antwerp, University of Antwerp, Keizerstraat 64, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium; Antwerp Maritime Academy, Noordkasteel Oost 6, 2030 Antwerp, Belgium

Abstract: This paper discusses a cyclic scheduling problem arising in cyclic inventory routing, in which a single vehicle has to make multiple tours with different frequencies. The objective is to find a minimal makespan schedule in which the vehicle never travels more than 8 hours per day [and] all tours are repeated with constant intervals. A mathematical model and a best-fit insertion heuristic are presented for this problem. Computational experiments show that the heuristic finds the optimal solution for 79 out of 100 randomly generated test instances.

Keywords: cyclic planning; multi-frequency multi-tours; scheduling; inventory routing; single vehicles; multiple tours; mathematical modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2009.022496

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2009 Vol.5 No.3/4, pp.214 - 227

Published online: 10 Jan 2009 *

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