Study Of The Inventory Routing Problem Based On Heuristics Theory

Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) provides an new chance for suppliers to overcome the problem of "trade - off" between transportation and inventory and reduce logistics costs by means of whole plan of transportation and inventory. From the angle of managerial operational research, the Inventory Routing Problem (IRP) in this paper is devoted to solve, taking into consideration the integration and optimization of inventory and transportation, inventory supplement and vehicle routing problem which have to be determined in plan function step at the level of operation in logistics management.In China, however, whether the research on IRP or the application in the logistics strategies involving inventory control and transport routing appear weak in current rapidly developing logistics research and practice. Consequently, this paper is meant to discuss IRP theoretically, and illustrate the conclusion of discussion in practice. In order to achieve this goal, this paper arranges contents as follows.In the first place, this paper introduces its research background, theoretical and practical significance. In additional, the article reviewed domestic and foreign researches on IRP based on the conclusions from lots of corresponding literature. In the meanwhile, this phrase describe the problem will be resolved and builds the structure of the paper.Secondly, in order to develop an understanding of IRP, its research objects, sphere and characteristics on the basis of the analysis and summary of corresponding literature. The paper makes a summary of widely used heuristics theory and introduces its generation, development, mechanism and characteristics in detail.Thirdly, one m-to-1 model for IRP is build; the aim at that problem, the paper constructed an improved heuristic algorithm to solve it. Then, the article lists an example of the algorithm for explaining the detailed process.Moreover, this paper testifies the conclusions of theoretical discussion by a logistics case, and illustrates the efficiency of solutions in every phase, the decision continuity between phases and the guidance significance of final solution to practical distribution operation.