Dynamic design of sales territories

The multi-period service territory design problem – An introduction, a model and a heuristic approach

“…As the objective function the authors use a weighted sum of four measures, namely the number of districts, the compactness of subdistricts, district similarity in subse- to be served on a single vehicle route from a central depot. The objectives are the same as in Lei et al (2015), but instead of using a weighted sum as the objective function, the authors treat the problem as a true multi-objective optimization problem and solve it with a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm. Although the problems in Lei et al (2015) and Lei et al (2016) consider a multi-period planning horizon, they do not contain a scheduling component comparable to the MPSTDP-S.…”

“…The objectives are the same as in Lei et al (2015), but instead of using a weighted sum as the objective function, the authors treat the problem as a true multi-objective optimization problem and solve it with a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm. Although the problems in Lei et al (2015) and Lei et al (2016) consider a multi-period planning horizon, they do not contain a scheduling component comparable to the MPSTDP-S. In Lei et al (2015), the service days within 190 each period must be decided, but, in contrast to the MPSTDP-S, each customer must be served exactly once per period and, hence, there are no restrictions on the temporal distribution of visits.…”

“…Although the problems in Lei et al (2015) and Lei et al (2016) consider a multi-period planning horizon, they do not contain a scheduling component comparable to the MPSTDP-S. In Lei et al (2015), the service days within 190 each period must be decided, but, in contrast to the MPSTDP-S, each customer must be served exactly once per period and, hence, there are no restrictions on the temporal distribution of visits. In particular, Lei et al (2015) do not consider week rhythms and weekday patterns, which are essential components of the MPSTDP-S.…”

“…Lei et al (2015) consider a problem in which the occurrence of customers changes from period to period. They assume that the customers of each period are known in advance and that a period comprises several weeks.…”

A GRASP‐Tabu Heuristic Approach to Territory Design for Pickup and Delivery Operations for Large‐Scale Instances

“…This fact has motivated the researchers to merge both decision processes in the same problem. One of the initial findings appears in [7], in which the method for vehicle routing proposed in [8] is compared against a methodology based on a districting approach. Wong and Beasley [9] considered the Vehicle Routing Using Fixed Delivery Areas (VRFDA), which is closely related to districting problems.…”