Coordination of Supply Chain: Scheduling and Batching Delivery with Soft Time Window Based on PSO-HC Algorithm

Scheduling and batching delivery are the key knots of logistics. This paper focuses on the batching delivery problem with soft time windows and its impact on the production scheduling in manufacturing plants. The motivation for introducing soft time windows is to obtain better routes and reduce the transportation cost by allowing controlled time window violations for some customers. We consider the problem of how to minimize operating costs while maintaining a certain customer service level. A model considering scheduling and batching delivery was built up. We formulate and solve this problem using a PSO_HC (particle swarm optimization combined with the hierarchical clustering) algorithm. Our experiments demonstrate the critical importance of soft time windows for the performance of our problem and the effectiveness of the PSO_HC algorithm. Our study has shown that, under the right conditions, the value of coordinating scheduling and batching delivery can be extremely high.