Conclusions
The inventory routing problem is the key problem in making the distribution plan of the refined oil. The working
time equilibrium of each tanker often needs to be considered in the actual arrangement of the oil delivery
scheme. In this paper, we study the inventory routing problem, which is to make the working time equilibrium
of the tanker as far as possible. The mathematical model of the problem is established and Lingo program is
written for solving the model. We further design a heuristic algorithm to solve the problem quickly. The model
and algorithm in this paper provide a theoretical basis for the formulation of the oil distribution plan.
This paper only considers the inventory routing problem of single refined oil distribution and assumes that the
demand of each gas station is determined, and a tanker is allowed to unload at multiple gas stations. In practice,
the demand of gas stations is usually a random variable and the tanker for distribution of the refined oil usually
has a plurality of compartments of different volumes. In order to facilitate the measurement of gas stations, the
oil in one compartment must be unloaded to one gas station, in other words, the oil in one compartment can’t be
unloaded to multiple gas stations. We will consider a variety of refined oil distribution problem in the future research
and add the vehicle compartment constraints and other conditions in order to get the results that are more
suitable to the actual distribution plan.