A joint production-workforce-delivery stochastic planning problem for perishable items

ABSTRACT

Despite the existence of a rich literature on Production Routing Problem (PRP), the lack of investigations on the workforce planning, and its impact on costs and productivity of the organisation caught our attention. This paper aims to fill this gap by designing a novel framework to integrate inventory, production, distribution, routing, and workforce planning decisions simultaneously. Because of the potential long distances between the main plant and the retailers spread throughout the country and also the perishability nature of the products, considering travelling time uncertainty for delivering products is necessary to have feasible decisions. The application of the proposed approach is investigated by being inspired from a supply chain structure from a knowledge-based company. We derive managerial insights on the benefit of an integrated decision. Besides, given the size and complexity of the proposed problem, we were challenged by exactly solving it in a reasonable time. We succeeded to reach this target by designing an innovative hybrid algorithm. Computational experiments on several numerical examples applied on both the studied real case and on PRP literature instances reveal the effectiveness and efficiency of our new hybrid method and permits to derive interesting managerial insights on the joint decisions.

KEYWORDS:

• Inventory control
• lot-sizing
• production-routing
• workforce planning
• Perishable items

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the first author, Pedram Farghadani-Chaharsooghi, upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pedram Farghadani-Chaharsooghi

Pedram Farghadani-Chaharsooghi is a first-year PhD student of Industrial Engineering at Concordia University. He is also affiliated with the Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation (CIRRELT). Pedram received his M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran, Iran, 2020) and Isfahan University of Technology (Isfahan, Iran, 2017) respectively. His research interests focus on Integer Programming, Robust Optimization, and Stochastic Programming.

Pooria Kamranfar

Pooria Kamranfar received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in Industrial Engineering from Isfahan University of Technology (Isfahan, Iran, 2017) and Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran, Iran, 2020) respectively. He is interested in Combinatorial and Stochastic Optimization and currently, he concentrates on the applications of Cutting Plane Algorithms in Integer Programming.

Mohammad Seyed Mirzapour Al-e-Hashem

S. Mohammad J. Mirzapour Al-e-hashem, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Iran, and affiliate professor at Rennes School of Business, France. Dr. Mirzapour received the B.S. degree in industrial engineering from K.N. Toosi University of Technology (KNTU), in 2005, the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial engineering from Iran University of Science & Technology (IUST), in 2010. From 2010 to 2011, he was a Research Assistant with the DISP laboratory, INSA de Lyon, France. He had been also in EMLYON business school for a two-year Postdoctoral fellow programme, from 2011 to 2013. He is the author of three books and more than 62 articles. His research interests include operations research, optimisation, sustainable supply chain management, and green logistics.

Yacine Rekik

Yacine Rekik is a Professor of Management Sciences at emlyon business school, France. He gained his Ph. D. degree in Industrial Engineering at Ecole Centrale Paris and an Accreditation to Supervise Research (HDR) from INSA Lyon. Before joining emlyon business school, he occupied a Research Associate position at the Distributed Information & Automation Lab of the University of Cambridge (UK). The purpose of his research project is to develop a set of models that provides qualitative and quantitative insights on the digital transformation of the supply chain. This research covers for instance the benefits of the RFID technology and the contribution of Artificial Intelligence in supply chains. He also works on economical and sustainability considerations in the Inventory Routing Problem.