Route Design for Lean Production Systems

Jeffrey W. Ohlmann (), Michael J. Fry () and Barrett W. Thomas ()
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Jeffrey W. Ohlmann: Department of Management Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242
Michael J. Fry: Department of Quantitative Analysis and Operations Management, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221
Barrett W. Thomas: Department of Management Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242

Transportation Science, 2008, vol. 42, issue 3, 352-370

Abstract: We consider the problem of routing a fleet of vehicles to pick up components from a network of suppliers and to deliver them to a fixed depot in a lean production system. The pursuit of low work-in-process inventory and production smoothing throughout the system introduces complicating side constraints, creating an enriched case of the vehicle routing problem with time windows and split deliveries. We present a two-phase routing and scheduling approach to address this problem. The routing phase consists of a nested tabu search heuristic that iterates between determining the suppliers' visit frequencies and developing vehicle routes. Given a routing plan, the scheduling phase determines the timing of supplier visits using a binary integer program designed to promote production leveling. Through computational testing on real-world data sets, we compare our solutions to those in the literature and those used by practitioners in the industry.

Keywords: vehicle routing; lean manufacturing; tabu search (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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