INTELLIGENT ROUTING APPROACH FOR THE DISTRIBUTIONS REGARDING TO THE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS AND FOODS

Year 2017, Volume: 4 Issue: 2, 168 - 177, 30.06.2017

Mehmet Karakoc

https://doi.org/10.17261/Pressacademia.2017.461

Abstract

Purpose- In this
study, to effectively manage the supply chain intended for the storage,
transportation and distribution of agricultural products and foods, an
intelligent routing approach is proposed for accomplishing this distribution at
low cost.

Methodology- As an
activity in logistics, the demands related to the exportation of various
foods/goods in agricultural production are considered. It is assumed that a
vehicle fleet, each vehicle with a certain load capacity, starts at a depot
with the loads, visits a set of points using the shortest paths while
accomplishing the related distributions and returns back to the depot. It is
aimed to find the route set with the minimum cost so that all customers are to
be visited.

Findings- The main
contribution of this study in which the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem has
been addressed is to find the route set to service all the customers in a
region while considering the points to be serviced globally; or for each
sub-region, the separated tours to service the related customer group while
considering them as subsets.

Conclusion- Using the
hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm including Genetic Algorithms and Local Search
developed for the solution, low costly route sets with separated/global tours
may be generated within very short periods of time. 

Keywords

Genetic algorithms, capacitated vehicle routing problem, logistics, supply chain, local search

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