Coordination of Production Scheduling and Vehicle Routing Problem with Due Dates.

This work presents a study on a problem of production and distribution planning. The problem considers a make-to-order production-distribution system with one manufacturer and many customers. The manufacturer (at the depot) produces the products once customer orders have been received. Distributions to the customers associated with a set of orders should be done before the customer's due date to avoid any penalty for delay. The problem is the extension of the Vehicle Routing Problem with Release and Due Dates (VRPRDD) where deliveries start depending on the fix release dates. To achieve optimum efficiency in planning, it makes sense to coordinate production schedule with distribution planning. This is the subject of this study. The classical approach which treats these two planning sequentially is proposed, in which VNS is used as optimization method since it shows to be the most competent heuristic in the VRPRDD. The results shown that integrating production schedule and routing vehicle is significantly better compared to VRPRDD.