Stochastic inventory routing problem under B2C e-commerce

Abstract

In traditional B2C, customers' stocks are usually controlled by themselves, while the supplier needs only to meet requests of customers by sending right commodity on time. The operation mode results in disadvantages of hindering saving of cost and improvement of efficiency. Being one of the key contents in vendor managed inventory, inventory routing problem will help supplier to lower operation cost, improve efficiency and increase satisfaction of customers. In the paper, a heuristic algorithm is designed to solve stochastic inventory routing problem. In the algorithm, followed by converting stochastic demands of customers to regular demands, distribution period of every customer is calculated by the modified EOQ. Finally, approximate solution of stochastic inventory routing problem can be obtained by solving periodic vehicle routing problem