In this research, the inventory control and transportation of syrup concentrate and final productsfor one bottling company working for a beverage company is studied. Bottling companies getsyrup concentrate from a beverage company to mix it with different ingredients to producevarious products and distribute them to retailers. Unsatisfied orders have several harmful effectson the bottling company. The main reason for not serving one retailer is that the number ofvehicles is not sufficient for delivery to all retailers. One method for preventing missed orders issending orders to some retailers in advance to hold for future use. Another way to deal with thisproblem is by renting vehicles, which increases the fleet size. The last is outsourcing shippingand/or warehousing. This problem belongs to Inventory Routing Problem (IRP) with some newfeatures such as options for rental vehicle and Third Party Logistics Providers (TPLP). Theproposed model in this study includes several time steps in which a decision in one time step canaffect future time steps. The proposed model is a multi-tier, multi-plant, multi-warehouse, andmulti-product model which considers non-homogeneous fleet. No model in the literatureconsiders all of these characteristics simultaneously.
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