Retracted: Coordination of production scheduling and vehicle routing problems for perishable food products

Abstract

This paper considers the integrated optimisation of production scheduling and vehicle routing problems for perishable food products under a manufacturer-retailer supply chain model. Considering the perishable characteristics and randomness of market demands and delivery time, an integer nonlinear programming model is constructed. Combining an improved genetic algorithm (GA) and a random simulation algorithm (RA), we design a hybrid GA-RA algorithm. To validate the proposed model and the algorithm, a case problem of a catering service company and some different sizes of test examples from Solomon’s problem set are analysed. The results show that arranging the production order and vehicle route simultaneously can significantly improve both the freshness of perishable food products and the customer service level. The proposed hybrid algorithm can obtain stable optimal solutions within a limited period of time for different sizes of such problems.