Design and analysis of a satellite network with direct delivery in the pharmaceutical industry

Stuart X. Zhu and Evrim Ursavas

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2018, vol. 116, issue C, 190-207

Abstract: Creating and maintaining an efficient distribution network is essential for companies in the modern pharmaceutical industry. Medicine delivery usually takes place via depots and/or satellites, and the proposed model for assessing the issue determines the facility and routing decisions simultaneously. We develop a technique that iterates between an upper bound and a lower bound, based on a blended Lagrangian relaxation branch-and-cut approach where we exploit separability and linearity. We conducted computational experiments on real-life instances from the Dutch pharmaceutical industry distribution network. We show that the solution method can provide solutions for real-life cases within reasonable time windows.

Keywords: Location-routing; Branch and cut; Lagrangian relaxation; Medicine delivery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2018.06.005

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