The inventory routing problem with two-dimensional loading constraints

Autor(es)

Hokama, Pedro H. B. ; Ferreira, Kamyla ; Munari, Pedro ; Morabito, Reinaldo ; Miyazawa, Flavio

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: COMPUTERS & INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING; v. 211, p. 23-pg., 2025-10-21.

Resumo

This paper introduces the Inventory Routing Problem with Two-Dimensional Loading Constraints (2L-IRP), which combines inventory management, vehicle routing and two-dimensional loading constraints. This problem has practical relevance and arises, for example, in the transportation of items such as pallet cargoes and fragile packages. Each customer order involves one or more items available at the supplier, and a time period up to which these items have to be delivered. The items and the vehicle containers are represented by two-dimensional rectangles and the loading of items must respect geometrical requirements. The 2L-IRP aims to determine routes with feasible packing of items to fulfill the customer demands over the time horizon, while minimizing inventory and routing costs. To effectively solve this problem, we propose a novel integer linear programming formulation, valid inequalities and a tailored branch-and-cut algorithm that relies on Constraint Programming and other enhanced techniques to incorporate item rotation. Computational experiments performed on a set of instances adapted from the literature show the performance of the proposed approaches and indicate the relevance and benefits of combining inventory and loading decisions for reducing the total distribution cost. The results were compared with two variants from the literature: one that does not consider inventory at the customers and another that disregards packing decisions when defining routes. Ignoring inventory decisions may increase the total cost up to 70%, while disregarding packing decisions may make over 83% of the solutions infeasible. Therefore, although the 2L-IRP is computationally more expensive than the basic variants, it can provide substantial improvements in logistics operations. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 16/23552-7 - Problemas de Corte e Empacotamento: Abordagens Práticas e Teóricas
• Beneficiário: Rafael Crivellari Saliba Schouery
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Regular
• Processo FAPESP: 22/10303-0 - Problema de roteamento de veículos com restrições de empacotamento, entrega fracionada e emissão de poluentes: modelos e algoritmos
• Beneficiário: Kamyla Maria Ferreira
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Brasil - Pós-Doutorado
• Processo FAPESP: 22/05803-3 - Problemas de corte, empacotamento, dimensionamento de lotes, programação da produção, roteamento e localização e suas integrações em contextos industriais e logísticos
• Beneficiário: Reinaldo Morabito Neto
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Temático
• Processo FAPESP: 13/07375-0 - CeMEAI - Centro de Ciências Matemáticas Aplicadas à Indústria
• Beneficiário: Francisco Louzada Neto
• Modalidade de apoio: Auxílio à Pesquisa - Centros de Pesquisa, Inovação e Difusão - CEPIDs
• Processo FAPESP: 16/11082-6 - Modelos matemáticos, métodos de solução exatos e heurísticos para o problema do roteamento e programação de navios na indústria de petróleo
• Beneficiário: Pedro Henrique Del Bianco Hokama
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Brasil - Pós-Doutorado