Supply Chain Management and its Applications in Computer Science

6The Delivery in the Supply Chain

6.1. Introduction

Today’s complex global supply chains are full of uncertainty. The volatile economic environment and customer demand variability require supply chains to be able to anticipate, control and react to disruptions and volatility, in collaboration with customers, suppliers and logistics partners. In order to restore supply chain stability, companies are looking for ways to optimize their global supply chain operations to execute on a customer value strategy of selling and fulfilling the right products and services at the right price, place and time. Transportation is one of these world players that have a daily struggle to offer their customers not only the best products but also the best experience, at the right time, price and quality. The main purpose in the delivery activity is to optimize the transfers between all sites that can produce different varieties of items and make sure they are available in the right quantities demanded at the right point of sale. Traditionally, two alternative objective are considered: the minimization of the total distance traveled or the minimization of the total travel cost. This minimization is subject to system constraint as the route continuity, the delivery to each customer once and the fulfillment of trucks’ capacity limitations. The delivery problem thereby specified gives rise to a routing solution that uses a subset of the available trucks while detailing each truck’s pathway. We explain ...