Abstract
This work introduces the sales force sizing problem with multi-period workload assignments, and service time windows. The motivation of the problem arises from a real life situation faced by a goods distribution company. The problem consists in determining the size of the sales force (i.e. the number of vendors to hire) and their daily schedules, within a planning horizon, to serve a set of customers in order to minimize the total nominal wage. There are different categories of customers and each customer has multiple time windows depending on the service day. Furthermore, the nominal wage of a hired vendor is determined by the most expensive category of the customers he serves. A mixed integer linear formulation and a heuristic are proposed for this problem. The performance of the heuristic algorithm is assessed over a set of instances adapted from literature. Computational results reveal the efficiency and scalability of the proposed procedure, providing a better tradeoff in terms of solution quality and running time than a commercial solver.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
