
This paper addresses the time management problem confronted by sales representatives. The sales representative planning his itinerary must decide the best way to ration time among the accounts comprising his territory. The time management problem is formulated as an integer program whereby each admissible call frequency for each account is represented by a zero-one decision variable. A branch-and-bound integer programming algorithm for this problem is presented. The algorithm is unique in that two integer programming formulations of the problem are used simultaneously in the search procedure and an approximation-cum-relaxation is evaluated at each branch in the search. Computational testing of the algorithm shows that it can solve many realistic time management problems optimally in fractions of a second.
Applications of mathematical programming, sales representative time management, Numerical mathematical programming methods, sales force, programming: integer algorithms, programming: integer, applications [marketing], optimal algorithm, Integer programming, computational experience, itinerary planning, Operations research and management science
Applications of mathematical programming, sales representative time management, Numerical mathematical programming methods, sales force, programming: integer algorithms, programming: integer, applications [marketing], optimal algorithm, Integer programming, computational experience, itinerary planning, Operations research and management science
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