Research On The Optimal Distribution Problem Of Airline Catering

Along with the development of the aviation industry, airline food catering companies are facingcomplex and changeful market environment, which means that improvement of cost managementlevel is necessary in order to get advantage in the competition. The distribution cost of airline cateringis a kind of variable costs in the process of operation. Although the unit cost of meals is low, when thescale of airline transportation is large enough, the total saving of variable cost is also considerable.This paper chooses the optimal distribution problem of airline catering as the main researchobject, using the research method of combining theoretical analysis with empirical research andqualitative analysis with quantitative analysis, applying theories of revenue management, queuingtheory and dynamic programming to research about air meal amount optimization decision methodand food car assignment. The main research work is as follows:First of all, the detailed descriptions are given to introduce the basic process of food protectionservices. Then we illustrate the add and subtract meal operation combined with the actual survey data.Problems in the catering operation are pointed out. On the basis of the actual problems in theoperation, the dynamic characteristics analysis and phase division in catering process are given.Besides, we elaborate the food truck assignment process, analyze the complexity and particularity offood car assignment.Secondly, according to the characteristics of frequent meals add and subtract in cateringoperation process, we analyze decision making problems of meals by revenue management, putforward the thought of distribution reduction, and set up catering model based on the reduction. Asingle meal of static reduction distribution model is established by queuing theory. After fullyconsidering dynamic characteristics of catering process, a multi-stage meal quantity optimizationmodel is established with the rate of No-show. Finally, we solve the index function by dynamicprogramming method. Meal amount optimization strategies are given and then an example is used toverify the validity of the model and algorithm.Thirdly, a catering-car assignment model with time window is established to optimize thecombination between flight and catering-car according to an objective function of minimum sum offlight waiting time and catering-car driving time, which is solved by column generation algorithmsand branch-and-bound algorithms. The effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithms areverified by an example.