Robust Optimisation Metaheuristics for the Inventory-Allocation Problem

As an example of a successful application of a relatively simple metaheuristics for a stochastic version of a multiple criteria optimisation problem, the inventory-allocation problem is discussed. Stochastic programming is introduced to deal with the demand of end consumers. It has been shown before that simple metaheuristics, i.e., local search may be a very competitive choice for solving computationally hard optimisation problems. In this paper, robust optimisation approach is applied to select more promising initial solutions which results in a significant improvement of time complexity of the optimisation algorithms. Furthermore, it allows more flexibility in choosing the final solution that need not always be minimising the sum of costs.