The inventory-routing problem subject to vehicle failure

• Published in: Transportation research. Part E, Logistics and transportation review Vol. 126; pp. 254 - 294
• Main Authors: Jafarian, Ahmad, Asgari, Nasrin, Mohri, Seyed Sina, Fatemi-Sadr, Elham, Farahani, Reza Zanjirani
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.06.2019
• Subjects: Inventory management; Meta-heuristic; Time windows; Vehicle failure; Vehicle routing; Inventory management; Time windows; Vehicle failure; Meta-heuristic; Vehicle routing
• ISSN: 1366-5545; 1878-5794
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2019.04.009

•Introducing the concept of vehicle failure to the inventory-routing problems and modelling it.•Applying an adapted social-based algorithm with four scenarios to solve the model.•Embedding the “global war” procedure to in the algorithm to escape from local optima.•Suggesting a lower bound to improve the validation process.•Providing insights for practitioners and academic related to this problem. The problem of vehicle failure is introduced to the field of inventory-routing problems and formulated. Since the model is NP-hard, we have designed an adapted social-based algorithm with four scenarios to solve it. We have embedded the “global war” procedure into the algorithm to reduce the chance of being trapped in local optimum and premature convergence. For validation, the following benchmarking methods are enlisted: (i) comparing with four other metaheuristic algorithms which are all calibrated and their effectiveness and efficiency evaluated; (ii) comparing with a suggested lower-bound. Sensitivity analyses of the algorithm provide insights for academics and practitioners.