Title: Vehicle routing problem in real case application

Authors: Imen Abbes; Chafik Abid; Habib Chabchoub; Mohamed Mahjoub Dhiaf

Addresses: Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, University of Sfax, Road Aéroport Km 4, Sfax 3018, Tunisia ' IIT, Cité El Ons Route de Tunis, Km 11 Technopole – Sfax, Tunisia ' University of Sfax, Sidi Mansour Road, Km. 10, 3089 SFAX, Tunisia ' Higher Institute of Industrial Management of Sfax, Road M'Harza Km 1.5, BP: 1164, Sfax 3000, Tunisia

Abstract: The delivery of goods from a warehouse to local customers is important and a practical issue in supply chain management. Current customers request improvement from day to day. If the total demand is greater than the whole capacity of the internal fleet, the use of the external carrier becomes necessary. Thus, it may be more economical to use an external carrier instead of an internal vehicle to serve one or very few customers. In this work, we attempt to model this company problem. We first try to assign vehicles to warehouse and determine the private fleet size needed at each one by taking into account the interventions of preventive maintenance. Then we develop a second model that routes this limited truck from two central warehouses to customers' with the option of using an external carrier.

Keywords: vehicle routing problem; VRP; preventive maintenance; 3PL; third party logistics; external carriers; modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2014.063153

International Journal of Operational Research, 2014 Vol.20 No.4, pp.453 - 468

Received: 07 Feb 2012
Accepted: 17 Dec 2012
Published online: 29 Jul 2014 *

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