Multi-echelon distribution networks are quite common in supply chain and logistics. Deliveries of multiple items from factories to customers aremanagedby routing and consolidating shipments inwarehouses carrying on long-term inventories. On the other hand, cross-docking is a logistics technique that differs from warehousing because products are no longer stored at intermediate depots. Instead, ...

During the last decade, the stringent pressures from environmental and social requirements have spurred an interest in designing a reverse logistics (RL) network. The success of a logistics system may depend on the decisions of the facilities locations and vehicle routings. The location-routing problem (LRP) simultaneously locates the facilities and designs the travel routes for vehicles among ...

We consider distribution systems with a single depot and many retailers each of which faces external demands for a single item that occurs at a specific deterministic demand rate. All stock enters the systems through the depot where it can be stored and then picked up and distributed to the retailers by a fleet of vehicles, combining deliveries into efficient routes. We extend earlier methods f...

in this paper we address the vrpcd, in which a set of homogeneous vehicles are used to transport products from the suppliers to customers via a cross-dock. the products can be consolidated at the cross-dock but cannot be stored for very long as the cross-dock does not have long-term inventory-holding capabilities. the objective of the vrpcd is to minimize the total traveled distance while respe...

the vehicle routing problem with backhauls (vrpb) as an extension of the classical vehicle routing prob-lem (vrp) attempts to define a set of routes which services both linehaul customers whom product are to be delivered and backhaul customers whom goods need to be collected. a primary objective for the problem usually is minimizing the total distribution cost. most real-life problems have othe...

customer service level is of prime importance in today competitive world and has various dimensions with delivery quality being one of the most important ones. delivery quality has several parameters such as deliver time window options, time window size, etc. in this paper we focus on one of these parameters, namely time window setting. it has a direct impact upon customer satisfaction and busi...