Factory Gate Pricing: An Analysis of the Dutch Retail Distribution

Factory Gate Pricing (FGP) is a relatively new phenomenon in retail distribution.Under FGP, products are no longer delivered at the retailer distribution center, but collected by the retailer at the factory gates of the suppliers.Owing to both the asymmetry in the distribution networks (the supplier sites greatly outnumber the retailer distribution centers) and the better inventory and transport coordination mechanisms, this is likely to result in high savings.A mathematical model was used to analyze the benefits of FGP for a case study in the Dutch retail sector.Extensive numerical results are presented to show the effect of the orchestration shift from supplier to retailer, the improved coordination mechanisms, and sector-wide cooperation.pricing;retailing;distribution;supply chain management;Netherlands

A Combined Method for Capacitated Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem with Strict Time Windows Considering Pickup and Delivery

The paper develops a model for the optimal management of periodic deliveries of a given commodity with known capacity called Capacitated Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem (CPVRP). Due to the large number of customers, it is necessary to incorporate strict time windows, and pick-up and delivery in the periodic planning.. The goal is to schedule the deliveries according to feasible combinations of delivery days and to determine the the routing policies of the vehicles. The objective is to minimize the sum of the costs of all routes over the planning horizon. We model the problem as a large-scale linear mixed integer program and we propose a combined approach to solve the problem

Factory Gate Pricing: An Analysis of the Dutch Retail Distribution

Factory Gate Pricing (FGP) is a relatively new phenomenon in retail distribution. Under FGP, products are no longer delivered at the retailer distribution center, but collected by the retailer at the factory gates of the suppliers. Owing to both the asymmetry in the distribution networks (the supplier sites greatly outnumber the retailer distribution centers) and the better inventory and transport coordination mechanisms, this is likely to result in high savings. A mathematical model was used to analyze the benefits of FGP for a case study in the Dutch retail sector. Extensive numerical results are presented to show the effect of the orchestration shift from supplier to retailer, the improved coordination mechanisms, and sector-wide cooperation.supply chain management;factory gate pricing;retail distribution

An Integer Optimization Model for the Time Windows Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem with Delivery, Fleet, and Driver Scheduling

The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a well-known combinatorial optimization problem which describes a homogeneous set of vehicles and routes, in which each vehicle starts from a depot and traverses along a route in order to serve a set of customers with known geographical locations. If the delivery routes are constructed for period of time, the VRP is generalized as periodic VRP (PVRP). This paper develops a model for the optimal management of periodic deliveries of meals of a catering company. The PVRP incorporates time windows, deliveries, fleet and driver scheduling in the periodic planning.. The objective is to minimize the sum of the costs of travelling and elapsed time over the planning horizon. We model the problem as a linear mixed integer program and we propose a feasible neighbourhood direct search approach to solve the problem

Factory Gate Pricing: An Analysis of the Dutch Retail Distribution

Factory Gate Pricing (FGP) is a relatively new phenomenon in retail distribution. Under FGP, products are no longer delivered at the retailer distribution center, but collected by the retailer at the factory gates of the suppliers. Owing to both the asymmetry in the distribution networks (the supplier sites greatly outnumber the retailer distribution centers) and the better inventory and transport coordination mechanisms, this is likely to result in high savings. A mathematical model was used to analyze the benefits of FGP for a case study in the Dutch retail sector. Extensive numerical results are presented to show the effect of the orchestration shift from supplier to retailer, the improved coordination mechanisms, and sector-wide cooperation

Flexibility and Complexity in Periodic Distribution Problems

In this paper, we explore trade-offs between operational flexibility and operational complexity in periodic distribution problems. We consider the gains from operational flexibility in terms of vehicle routing costs and customer service benefits, and the costs of operational complexity in terms of implementation difficulty. Periodic distribution problems arise in a number of industries, including food distribution, waste management and mail services. The period vehicle routing problem (PVRP) is a variation of the classic vehicle routing problem in which driver routes are constructed for a period of time; the PVRP with service choice (PVRP-SC) extends the PVRP to allow service (visit) frequency to become a decision of the model. While introducing operational flexibility in periodic distribution systems can increase efficiency, it poses three challenges: the difficulty of modeling this flexibility accurately; the computational effort required to solve the problem as modeled with such flexibility; and the complexity of operationally implementing the resulting solution. This paper considers these trade-offs between the system performance improvements due to operational flexibility and the resulting increases in operational and computational complexity as they relate to periodic vehicle routing problems. In particular, increasing the operational complexity of driver routes can be problematic in industries where some level of system regularity is required. As discussed in the paper, recent work in the literature suggests that dispatching drivers consistently to the same geographic areas results in driver familiarity and improved driver performance. Additionally, having the same driver visit a customer on a continual basis can foster critical relationships. According to UPS, such driver-customer relationships are a key competitive advantage in its package delivery operations, attributing 60 million packages a year to sales leads generated by drivers. In this paper, we develop a set of quantitative measures to evaluate the trade-offs between flexibility and complexity

Heuristics for the free newspaper delivery problem

In dieser Diplomarbeit wird ein auf Heuristiken basierter Lösungsansatz für das Free Newspaper Delivery Problem präsentiert Das Free Newspaper Delivery Problem ist eine Variante des Vehicle Routing Problems, bei dem der Produzent Entscheidungen, über Menge, Lieferzeitpunkt und Routenplanung für die Verteilung aller an einem Tag produzierten Zeitungen an Strassenbahn und U-Bahn-Stationen, trifft. Dabei ist zu beachten, dass im Planungszeitraum die Anzahl der Zeitungen in den Stationen mindestens Eins und an dessen Ende Null sein muss. Grundlage für die Construction Heuristik ist eine Dekompositionsmethode, die die Lösung der vielfältigen Entscheidungen in zwei Phasen teilt. Zuerst wird ein Lieferplan erstellt, danach erfolgt die Erstellung der Routenpläne. Als Improvement Heuristiken für dieses Problem wurden OR-Opt und Variable Neighbourhood Search verwendet. Der Fokus der Arbeit liegt in der Erstellung einer Lösungsmethode und deren Test und Analyse anhand einer Testinstanz

Metaheuristic Approaches For Estimating In-Kind Food Donations Availability And Scheduling Food Bank Vehicles

Food banks provide services that allow households facing food insecurity to receive nutritious food items. Food banks, however, experience operational challenges as a result of constrained and uncertain supply and complex routing challenges. The goal of this research is to explore opportunities to enhance food bank operations through metaheuristic forecasting and scheduling practices. Knowledge discovery methods and supervised machine learning are used to forecast food availability at supermarkets. In particular, a quasi-greedy algorithm which selects multi-layer perceptron models to represent food availability is introduced. In addition, a new classification of the vehicle routing problem is proposed to manage the distribution and collection of food items. In particular, variants of the periodic vehicle routing problem backhauls are introduced. In addition to discussing model formulations for the routing problems, a hybrid genetic algorithm is introduced which finds good solutions for larger problem instances in a reasonable computation time