A Model and Solution Method for Solving the Real-world and Complex Problem of Scheduling Visits to Customers

Some of the complex logistical problems faced by companies combine the needs for strategic and tactical decisions concerning the interrelated issues of clustering, scheduling, and routing. Various strategies can be used to solve these problems. We present a problem of this type, involving a company whose fundamental objective is the commercialization of its product in the domestic market. The paper focuses on a model of and method for a solution to the problem of scheduling visits to customers, taking into account the relationship with other phases of product marketing. The model is nonlinear, involves binary and continuous variables, and solved heuristically. Computational experiments show that the proposed solution performed very well for both real-life and theoretical instances.