Application of Heuristics in Logistics and Job-Shop Scheduling

Abstract

The development of heuristics techniques has emerged over the years to address complex decision-making process in the various fields of social sciences. With many advantages of heuristics, there are few disadvantages also, which should be carefully handled to arrive at the decision or solution. The researchers have put enormous effort to develop heuristics model integrating with the nature-inspired algorithm. Development of heuristics has made it easy to formulate and to solve various complex real-life problems including some of the well-known supply-chain problems. Due to change in the business environment, the activities related to procuring raw material and delivery of finished goods are tied cohesively. As a result, now job-shop scheduling is not a discrete supply-chain problem. It is linked with inventory of raw materials, inventory of finished products and just-in-time delivery of goods through right channels. Another crucial aspect of supply-chain domain is to build integrated and effective logistics system which is popularly known as vehicle routing problem.