A dynamic network design model for refuse collection in reverse logistics

초록

This study considers the refuse collection network design problem in reverse logistics. To consider fluctuating refuse demands in collection systems, a dynamic version of the problem is considered in which the locations of collection points are fixed, but the allocations are changed over the planning horizon with discrete time periods. The problem is formulated as an integer programming model with the objective of minimizing the sum of fixed and variable costs, and then two heuristics, minimax regret based branch and bound and modified drop heuristics, are suggested in this study. Each of the two heuristics is based on the decomposition of the entire problem into the two sub-problems, the location and the allocation problems. Computational experiments were done on various test instances, and the results are reported.