Article ID: | iaor2009953 |
Country: | Netherlands |
Volume: | 159 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 395 |
End Page Number: | 414 |
Publication Date: | Mar 2008 |
Journal: | Annals of Operations Research |
Authors: | Lei Lei, Armstrong Ronald, Gao Su |
Keywords: | programming: branch and bound, inventory, heuristics, distribution, vehicle routing & scheduling |
In this paper, we study the zero-inventory production and distribution problem with a single transporter and a fixed sequence of customers. The production facility has a limited production rate, and the delivery truck has non-negligible traveling times between locations. The order in which customers may receive deliveries is fixed. Each customer requests a delivery quantity and a time window for receiving the delivery. The lifespan of the product starts as soon as the production for a customer's order is finished, which makes the product expire in a constant time. Since the production facility and the shipping truck are limited resources, not all the customers may receive the delivery within their specified time windows and/or within product lifespan. The problem is then to choose a subset of customers from the given sequence to receive the deliveries to maximize the total demand satisfied.