An integrated approach for the vending machine replenishment problem

• Main Authors: Chih-Hang Lu, 呂志航
• Other Authors: Shan-Huen Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/00210142170364400881

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 運籌管理所 === 95 === In this paper we present a model and solution procedures for the vending machine replenishment problem encountered in vending machine supply chains utilizing vendor-managed inventory (VMI) scheme. The model is a modification of the existing Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem (PVRP). Our model is different from from previous research in that the replenishment period is not fixed and its objective is to minimize the sum of the shortage cost and traveling costs during a given time period. The proposed model belongs to the class of NP-hard problems since it includes the vehicle routing problem as a subproblem. It is difficult to solve this problem to optimality within a reasonable time period. Thus,we developed a Simulated Annealing (SA) heuristic for this problem by. The SA treats the replenishment frequency of each vending machine as a decision variable instead of a fixed parameter. It optimizes the replenishment frequencies of vending machines and vehicle routes simultaneously in order to find the best trade-off between the shortage and transporataion costs. This new approach can reduce the total shortage and transporation cost by 10 to 20%, as indicated by the computational study.