This book deals with complex variants of Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) and Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) within the manufacturing and service industries. The objective is to develop heuristics for these supply chain problems in order to offer practical solutions to improve operational efficiency. These heuristics are evaluated using benchmark and derived data-sets. Case studies pertaining to logistics in different industries including textile machinery manufacturing and banking are also included to demonstrate the created heuristics. High competition in today’s global market has forced the organizations to invest in and focus on their logistics system. The critical function of logistics is the transportation within and across various supply chain entities. Both supply and distribution procedure require effective transportation management. A small improvement in routing problems can lead to huge logistics savings in absolute terms. This book should appeal to executives, researchers and consultants seeking supply chain management solutions.

In a unified and carefully developed presentation, this book systematically examines recent developments in VRP. The book focuses on a portfolio of significant technical advances that have evolved over the past few years for modeling and solving vehicle routing problems and VRP variations. Reflecting the most recent scholarship, this book is written by one of the top research scholars in Vehicle Routing and is one of the most important books in VRP to be published in recent times.

TEODOR GABRIEL CRAINIC, DIRECTOR The Centre for Research on Transportation (C.R.T.) was founded in 1971 by the Universite de Montreal. From 1988 on, it is jointly managed by the Universite de Montreal and its affiliated schools, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales and Ecole Poly technique. Professors, students and researchers from many institutions in the Montreal area join forces at the C.R.T. to analyze transportation, logistics and telecommunication systems from a multidisciplinary perspective. The C.R.T. pursues three major, complementary objectives: training of high-level specialists; the advancement of knowledge and technology; the transfer of technology towards industry and the public sector. Its main field of expertise is the develop ment of quantitative and computer-based models and methods for the analysis of urban, regional and intercity transportation networks, as well as telecommunication systems. This applies to the study of passenger and commodity flows, as well as to the socioeconomic aspects of transportation: policy, regulation, economics. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the C.R.T. offered the opportunity to evaluate past accomplishments and to identify future trends and challenges. Five colloquia were thus organized on major research and application themes that also reflected our main research areas. They gathered together internationally renowned researchers who linked recent scientific and technological advances to modeling and methodological challenges waiting to be tackled, particularly concerning new problems and applica tions, and the increasingly widespread use of new technologies.

Vehicle routing problems, among the most studied in combinatorial optimization, arise in many practical contexts (freight distribution and collection, transportation, garbage collection, newspaper delivery, etc.). Operations researchers have made significant developments in the algorithms for their solution, and Vehicle Routing: Problems, Methods, and Applications, Second Edition reflects these advances. The text of the new edition is either completely new or significantly revised and provides extensive and complete state-of-the-art coverage of vehicle routing by those who have done most of the innovative research in the area; it emphasizes methodology related to specific classes of vehicle routing problems and, since vehicle routing is used as a benchmark for all new solution techniques, contains a complete overview of current solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. It also includes several chapters on important and emerging applications, such as disaster relief and green vehicle routing.

Supply Chain Optimization captures the latest results in a segment of current research activity in supply chain management. This research area focuses on applying optimization techniques to supply chain management problems. The research papers that make up the volume provide a snapshot of state-of-the-art optimization methods within the field. This book presents rigorous modelling approaches for supply chain operations problems with a goal of improving supply chain performance (or the performance of some segment thereof). It contains high-quality works from leading researchers in the field whose expertise fits within this scope. The book provides a diverse blend of research topics and novel modelling and solution approaches for difficult classes of supply chain operations, planning, and design problems.

This book serves as a primer on freight transportation and logistics, providing a general and broad coverage of concepts, mathematical models and methodologies available for freight transportation planning at strategic, tactical and operational levels. It is aimed at graduate students, and is also a reference book for practitioners in the field. The book includes preliminaries, such as mathematical modeling and optimisation algorithms. The book also features case studies and practical real-life examples to illustrate applications of the concepts and models covered, and to encourage a hands-on and a practical approach. The author has taught and published extensively in the field and draw on state-of-the-art scientific research. He has also been part of a number of practical research projects, which underpin the real life examples in the book.