Research On Inventory Routing Problem Of Manufacturing-Distribution System

The topic selection come from the National Natural Science Foundation Project (grant number: 70771034): research on inventory-routing coordination models and methods based on non-integrated supply chain.Inventory-routing problem (IRP) studies the integrated optimization of inventory and transport based on vehicle-routing problem (VRP) and inventory control. The purpose is to search the optimal inventory-distribution policy which can minimize the total costs of the whole supply chain consisting of inventory and transport costs. As far as the exiting research, integrated optimization can better improve the effect and save more costs. Inventory-routing problem (IRP) has been studied since 1980s, and a lot of effective models and approaches have been proposed abroad while there are few researches on IRP in our country.IRP occurs as the application of VMI which is widely applied in manufacture-distributing system and makes good effects for information sharing among manufacturer and distributors. But poor efficiency and lack of prudence also exist under deterministic demand and symmetric information since that choosing stock out can increase the enterprises'benefits sometimes when the capacity of retailers'warehouse is certain and the cost constitute factors are not considered completely. This paper just studies these problems based on the existing situations and researches.The contents of this dissertation are as follows.Firstly, we analyze the IRP of manufacture-distributing system considering the shortage costs caused by the limitation of vehicle capacity and time expensed during the transportation. This makes the computing more exactly and the transportation more reasonably.Secondly, we propose a model to determine the optimal manufacture -distributing policy which can minimize the day average cost under a two-echelon logistic system adopting VMI with production period and distributing frequency as the decision variables.