Traffic flow routing and scheduling in a food supply network

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on the reference model of a grid-like supply network that enables formulation of delivery routing and scheduling problems in the context of the periodic vehicle routing problem. Design/methodology/approach – The conditions for seamless (collision-free) synchronization of periodically executed local transport processes presented in this paper guarantee cyclic execution of supply processes, thereby preventing traffic flow congestion. Findings – Systems that satisfy this characteristic, cyclic deliveries executed along supply chains are given and what is sought is the number of vehicles needed to operate the local transport processes in order to ensure delivery from and to specific loading/unloading points on given dates. Determination of sufficient conditions guaranteeing the existence of feasible solutions that satisfy these constraints makes it possible to solve the considered class of problems online. Practical implications – The computer experiments reported in this paper show the possibilities of practical application of the proposed approach in the construction of decision support systems for food supply chain management. Originality/value – The aim of the present work is to develop a methodology for the synthesis of regularly structured supply networks that would ensure fixed cyclic execution of local transport processes. The proposed methodology, which implements sufficient conditions for the synchronization of local cyclic processes, allows one to develop a method for rapid prototyping of supply processes that satisfies the time windows constraints given.