Aditi Sharma
Student, M. Tech Industrial Engineering and Management, Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Shri Govindram Seksaria Institute of Technology and Science (SGSITS) Indore, 23, Sir M. Visvesvarya Marg, Vallabh Nagar, Indore-452003, (MP) India
Neha Patkar
Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Shri Govindram Seksaria Institute of Technology and Science (SGSITS) Indore, 23, Sir M. Visvesvarya Marg, Vallabh Nagar, Indore-452003, (MP) India
Abstract
The milk delivery systems rely primarily on the routes planned by management to distribute the milk to numerous clients throughout the city within time constraints. This necessitates adequate route and vehicle planning such that the total cost of transportation is kept to a minimum and the organization’s resources are efficiently utilized. To develop better routes in such scenarios, the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) has remained one of the most researched optimization problems in Operations Research. In this article, Madhya Pradesh State Co-operative Dairy Federation Limited (Sanchi, Gwalior) milk distribution case is examined to lower the cost of milk delivery to its 191 consumers while satisfying the constraints provided. VRP Spreadsheet Solver, a Microsoft Excel-based open-solver, is used for this purpose. Despite the software tool’s limitations in data computation and optimization, encouraging results were reached. When compared to the prior routes, the entire distance traveled by milk delivery trucks in the new routes was reduced by 25% or 120 km, while the average capacity utilization of delivery trucks increased by 29%. As a consequence, the results effectively saved 1127.53 Indian Rupees in fuel and resources for a single shift of milk delivery.
Keywords- Vehicle Routing Problem, VRP spreadsheet solver, open-sourced solver, heuristics