Disruption management recovery model of distribution delay with service priority

Abstract

During the process logistics distribution, distribution delay would decrease customer service level, some customers especially key customers will take some new suppliers with higher service level to replace the existing suppliers, and this change will brings huge risk even great loss to the origin suppliers. To help suppliers success to keep old key customers and reduce their risk of key customer loss, this study brings disruption management idea into vehicle routing problem (VRP), presents a delivery service priority method which considers customers' service priority and provide prior delivery service to key customers in their time window. A single-vehicle delivery delay disruption management recovery model with service priority and a multi-vehicle delivery delay disruption management recovery model with service priority are constructed to ensure all the key customers' service level when distribution delay occurred. Then, an improved Genetic algorithm is designed to solve them. Finally, a simulation example model is presented to demonstrate the feasibility and validity of the proposed models and algorithm. This study provides two referenced models and solution algorithm for disruption management of logistics distribution network composed by one supplier (or a third-party logistics company) and multiple customers.