An adaptive large neighbourhood search for the operational integrated production and distribution problem of perishable products

Author(s)

Belo-Filho, M. A. F. ^[1] ; Amorim, P. ^[2] ; Almada-Lobo, B. ^[2]

Affiliation

^[1] Univ Sao Paulo, Inst Ciencias Matemat & Computacao, Sao Carlos, SP - Brazil

^[2] Univ Porto, Fac Engn, INESC TEC, P-4100 Oporto - Portugal

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH; v. 53, n. 20, p. 6040-6058, OCT 18 2015.
• Web of Science Citations: 19

Abstract

Production and distribution problems with perishable goods are common in many industries. For the sake of the competitiveness of the companies, the supply chain planning of products with restricted lifespan should be addressed with an integrated approach. Particularly, at the operational level, the sizing and scheduling of production lots have to be decided together with vehicle routing decisions to satisfy the customers. However, such joint decisions make the problems hard to solve for industries with a large product portfolio. This paper proposes an adaptive large neighbourhood search (ALNS) framework to tackle the problem. This metaheuristic is well known to be effective for vehicle routing problems. The proposed approach relies on mixed-integer linear programming models and tools. The ALNS outperforms traditional procedures of the literature, namely, exact methods and fix-and-optimize, in terms of quality of the solution and computational time of the algorithms. Nine in ten runs of ALNS yielded better solutions than traditional procedures, outperforming on average 12.7% over the best solutions provided by the latter methods. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 10/06901-1 - Lot sizing with setup carryover and crossover
• Grantee: Márcio Antônio Ferreira Belo Filho
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate