Question

What type of problems in supply chain can be addressed by the travelling thief problem?

Answer 1

A supply chain is a chain between a company and its suppliers. The supply chain has many steps that involve bringing raw material to the organization and delivering the finished goods to its end users. Supply chain helps the management of the organization to minimize the cost of the production and to increase profits. The supply chain includes many entities that allow the organization that are producers who produce goods, transporters who transport goods to remote places, warehouse stocks them. Distributors distribute them into retailors. Retailers deliver it to the final user of the products.

The supply chain problems are difficult to be optimized, but the travelling thief problem can make it easy to be optimized. The travelling thief problem can be referred to as a technique to provide solutions to these problems in the supply chain. It is an NP-hard optimization problem that helps in the creation of a more realistic and easy model. The travelling thief problem can solve the packing and loading problem that may arise in the supply chain. The problem of transportation is also resolved through travelling thief problem. The travelling thief problem deals with the issue of the high cost of renting and tends t reduce the cost. The travelling thief problem solves the problem of travelling salesman problem and knapsack problem.

In the supply chain, there arises a problem of constraint optimization. Various independent components are included in the supply chain management that makes the optimization problem more difficult. The travelling thief problem solves the optimization problem by combing travelling sale problem component and knapsack problem components.