On modeling the single period spare parts distribution system design problem by mixed integer linear optimization

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2325793 (Table of contents)

Efficiency and effectiveness of spare parts logistics play a significant role in changing customers’ service levels. A company providing high quality after-sales support to their customers gains competitive advantages. To study a single period multi commodity spare parts distribution system design problem, we present a mathematical model in the form of a mixed integer linear programming problem formulation. The mathematical model incorporates facility location decisions and vehicle size selection as well as routing decisions. The problem formulation minimizes the total cost including opening and operating costs of the depots and transportation costs for the vehicles. In order to define and solve a realistic spare parts distribution system design problem, we use aggregation on the commodity flow data to reduce the size of the problem and generate the outbound distribution routes from the regional depots to the service points apriori to simplify the mathematical model. The main focus of this study is the apriori route generation; we aim to observe the impact of different route sets obtained by different heuristic methods. The solution quality and the computation time to solve the problems to optimality are used to compare the performance of the three routing heuristics