Minimizing the mean tardiness by integrating the production and distribution planning

• Grant number: 13/21166-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2014
• End date: February 28, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Production Engineering - Operational Research
• Principal Investigator: Roberto Fernandes Tavares Neto
• Grantee: Leonardo Asano
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Exatas e de Tecnologia (CCET). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Both scheduling and vehicle routing problems have been proved to be extremely relevant both on the theoretical and practical fields. However, a few number of researches was published about the integration of those two problems. A preliminary bibliographic review shows that this integration, although can bring a significantly large complexity for those problems, can generate extreme relevant results in real-world scenarios. The objective of this project proposal is to study how this integration can be used to minimize the mean tardiness in an integrated production-distribution system. To perform this analysis, two approaches will be used: mathematical programming and a heuristic. The main goals are: (I) obtain a mathematical model to solve the problem; (II) to generate a set of public benchmarks; (III) to elaborate a heuristic strategy to solve larger instances of the problem.