A Vehicle Routing Problem Arising In The Collection Of Automobile Parts With The Application Of The Progress-lane

In recent years,automotive industry has faced an unprecedented challenge and the profit differences got from improved technology and new products are not significant.More and more automakers focus on how to reduce costs instead of simply focusing on how to increase profits.In this process,the significant effect of lean production and lean logistics on reducing costs has been widely recognized.Toyota production system has pursuing JIT(Just-In-Time)and Zero-Inventory to promote lean theory,however,this so called Zero-Inventory is infeasible in real production.So it is necessary to keep some inventory of all kinds of parts but in low volume to cope with demand fluctuation.PROGRESS LANE(P-LANE)due to its segmentation and absorption function which can balance the JIT production and batch transportation,has also been adopted by some car manufacturers in recent years.P-LANE,as a kind of special storage mode,on the one hand,has changed the traditional parts of Milk-Run model,on the other hand,the high speed of the parts rotation,can minimize the total cost to balance the inventory cost and transportation cost,which is more in line with the actual lean logistics in transportation.The dissertation studies the vehicle routing problem arising in the collection of automobile parts with the application of the Progress-Lane systematically by using optimization theory and methods.First,we introduce how the milk run system work when considering P-LANE and analyze the advantages of this new application.Then we build a mathematical model to minimize the total costs and provide the optimal vehicle routes.In order to get the solution,we design exact algorithm and developed heuristic algorithm respectively.We first solve the small instances to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model and the algorithm and then use heuristic algorithm to solve large instances which are in accordance with the actual accident situation.Finally,Zero-inventory model is proposed for the comparison with P_LANE to illustrate the performance of P_LANE.