Integration of Inventory Routing Problem in Supply Chain with Considering CrossDock

Reducing the cost of transportation and handling of products is one of the most important and effective goals in the field of routing, logistics and supply chain management. In this regard, vehicle routing, location routing, and inventory routing problems have are of interest to researchers and scholars. In the present study, a multi period inventory routing problem with several transit warehouses has been investigated. Unlike other similar researches in this field, the problem has been studied in a multi-period time considering more than one CrossDock. The problem was formulated as a mixed integer linear programming model. A numerical study with sensitivity analysis has been carried out to explain the efficacy of the proposed model. The results show that decreasing the capacity of either warehouses or vehicles will increase the total costs and increasing them will not affect the total costs; reducing either the demands or the transportation times will reduce the total costs and increasing them will increase the total costs; furthermore, Shrinking the time windows will increase the total costs and enlarging them will not affect the total costs.