A Heuristic Approach for a Multiple Depots Stochastic Inventory Routing Problem in Liquefied Natural Gas Distribution on Road Network

In this work, we propose an approach for solving an inventory routing problem related to the transportation of liquified natural gas by road. Our goal is to properly route the available fleet of vehicles to serve multiple customers from several depots in a predefined planning horizon, minimizing the total travelled distance and avoiding stock out events at customer sites. We first present a mathematical formulation of this problem. Due to the complexity of the problem, a three-phase heuristic approach is proposed. These three phases consist of clustering, uniform distribution of stations’ demand in a planning horizon, determining the routes by prioritizing the customers with high stock out probability in a routing horizon. Secondly, we describe the software architecture of the implemented distribution system. This approach is applied in a real-life scenario, and the computational results demonstrate that the application of this heuristic is effective and reduces the distribution cost.