TY - JOUR
T1 - Optimising the periodic distribution of gas cylinders with customers priority
AU - Triki, Chefi
AU - Akil, Jamila
AU - Al-Azri, Nasser
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - This paper deals with a real-life application related to the distribution of gas cylinders to customers over a one-week horizon. Every customer should be served a pre-specified number of times during the week horizon. Customers are also characterised by a priority factor that expresses the importance of that customer to the company. Three heuristic methods have been develop based on a two-stage decomposition approach. The first stage assigns the customers to the service days and then, the second stage solves several VRPs, one for each working day. Several real-life experiments have been conducted to show that the heuristic that considers explicitly the customers priority performs well with respect to the other heuristics and also to the actual solution adopted by the company.
AB - This paper deals with a real-life application related to the distribution of gas cylinders to customers over a one-week horizon. Every customer should be served a pre-specified number of times during the week horizon. Customers are also characterised by a priority factor that expresses the importance of that customer to the company. Three heuristic methods have been develop based on a two-stage decomposition approach. The first stage assigns the customers to the service days and then, the second stage solves several VRPs, one for each working day. Several real-life experiments have been conducted to show that the heuristic that considers explicitly the customers priority performs well with respect to the other heuristics and also to the actual solution adopted by the company.
KW - Customers priority
KW - Gas cylinders distribution
KW - Periodic constraints
KW - Transportation problems
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U2 - 10.1504/IJOR.2017.081478
DO - 10.1504/IJOR.2017.081478
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85010377973
SN - 1745-7645
VL - 28
SP - 279
EP - 286
JO - International Journal of Operational Research
JF - International Journal of Operational Research
IS - 2
ER -