A tabu search procedure for coordinating production, inventory and distribution routing problems

摘要

This paper addresses the problem of optimally coordinating a production-distribution system over a multi-period finite horizon, where a facility production produces several items that are distributed to a set ofcustomers by a fleet of homogeneous vehicles. The demand for each item at each customer is known overthe horizon. The production planning determines how much to produce of each item in every period, whilethe distribution planning defines when customers should be visited, the amount of each item that should bedelivered to customers and the vehicle routes. The objective is to minimize the sum of production andinventory costs at the facility, inventory costs at the customers and distribution costs. We also consider arelated problem of inventory routing, where a supplier receives or produces known quantities of items ineach period and has to solve the distribution problem. We propose a tabu search procedure for solving suchproblems, and this approach is compared with vendor managed policies proposed in the literature, in whichthe facility knows the inventory levels of the customers and determines the replenishment policies.