Iterative Projection approach for solving the Territorial Business Sales optimization problem

Abstract

A well designed territory enhances customer coverage, increases sales, fosters fair performance and rewards systems and lower travel cost. This paper considers a real life case study to design a sales territory for a business sales plan. The business plan consists in assigning the optimal quantity of sellers to a territory including the scheduling and routing plans for each seller. The problem is formulated as a combination of assignment, scheduling and routing optimization problems. The solution approach considers a meta-heuristic using stochastic iterative projection method for large systems. Several real life instances of different sizes were tested with stochastic data to represent raise/fall in the customers demand as well as the appearance/loss of customers.