Location Planning Considering Delivery Time and Service Level Constraints A Heuristic Solution Approach to a Linear Optimization Problem from an Automotive Spare Parts Network
This thesis addresses the challenge to model a warehouse location problem under consideration
of delivery time and service level constraints. For identification of appropriate modelling techniques,
literature research is conducted to identify relevant models using similar approaches.
A European spare parts network is chosen for model application, which is why qualitative research
combined with an expert interview supports model development from a content perspective.
The developed model requires customer classification into different delivery time
categories, for which a desired service level is set as input data. A sensitivity analysis of the
model shows the impact of an increasing service level on the objective function value, and is
thus allowing to quantify costs of measures towards a more decentralized network structure. In
order to guarantee applicability for a large amount of data, a heuristic combining Lagrangian
relaxation with a knapsack problem approach has been developed and solved within 8 hours of
computation time.MSc in Logistics and Transport Managemen