Planning and Analysis of Traveling Salesman Problem with Peddling under Partially Vendor-Managed Inventory (PVMI) System

Description

In third world nations and rural areas, villagers can buy daily necessities not only from shops but also from travelling salesmen. The objectives of this study are to investigate customer behaviour in buying goods from shops and travelling salesmen and to derive a series of models for inventory management and routing strategy for travelling salesmen so that they can make optimal decisions on how much they should order and which village they should visit first, second, etc. The contribution of this study is to develop business models by which poor people (such as travelling salesmen living in third world nations or rural areas) can be educated to help alleviate poverty and enable them to earn their living by their own efforts, supported by self-reliance programmes from charity parties and non-profit organizations.