Vehicle Routing and the Supply Chain

One of the central problems of supply chain management is the coordination of product and material flows between locations. A typical problem involves bringing product located at a central facility to geographically dispersed facilities at minimum cost. For example, a supply of product is located at a plant, warehouse, cross-docking facility or distribution center and must be distributed to customers or retailers. The task is often performed by a fleet of vehicles under direct control of the firm. Depending on the structure of the supply chain, a number of different distribution problems can be defined, e.g., where retailers/customers are external, i.e., not part of the same company, or where retailers are internal to the firm. In this chapter, we present models, analyses and approaches for solving a number of these distribution problems.