Location Planning Considering Delivery Time and Service Level Constraints A Heuristic Solution Approach to a Linear Optimization Problem from an Automotive Spare Parts Network

Abstract

This thesis addresses the challenge to model a warehouse location problem under consideration of delivery time and service level constraints. For identification of appropriate modelling techniques, literature research is conducted to identify relevant models using similar approaches. A European spare parts network is chosen for model application, which is why qualitative research combined with an expert interview supports model development from a content perspective. The developed model requires customer classification into different delivery time categories, for which a desired service level is set as input data. A sensitivity analysis of the model shows the impact of an increasing service level on the objective function value, and is thus allowing to quantify costs of measures towards a more decentralized network structure. In order to guarantee applicability for a large amount of data, a heuristic combining Lagrangian relaxation with a knapsack problem approach has been developed and solved within 8 hours of computation time.