Research And Application Of Delivery Routing Planning Based On MMAS

Physical distribution plays an important role in Modern Logistics Systems. Inside an enterprise, the commodity must be picked and sorted in one of the Regional Distribution Centers (RDCs). Front Distribution Center (FDC) likes a hub, connects RDC and some of the Cross Dockings (CDs). And logistics mainly occurs among RDC, FDC and CD. There are two kinds of logistic-network-mode, one is called DSD mode, which means Direct Store Delivery, and the other called TWD, which means Transit Warehouse Delivery. Costs under two modes are different. Clients' demands and the road network should be considered during the design. Routing design takes an important role in the total logistics cost. So optimizing the delivery routing is needed for cutting down the transportation cost. In many enterprises, the low-cost solutions would be the choice. So Vehicle Routing planning is the burning question.According to the different features, the DSD mode and TWD mode are abstracted as CVRP and MDVRP. VRP is a Non-deterministic Polynomial problem. The difficulty and the numbers of solutions grow exponentially due to node-adding. Heuristic algorithm becomes an important direction in this field. In this paper, the Max-Min Ant System (MMAS) is used to solve the CVRP and MDVRP. And an unusual ant-colony initial distribution and rules for updating the pheromone that distinguished from other research. It develops a global approach for MDVRP which didn't enlarge the model's complexity.In this paper, the transportation cost of the solutions helps to make decisions for a certain project case. Numerical data exhibits that the results of MMAS are feasible and lower convergence times. As a result, each RDC knows its delivery routes, service area, and every vehicle's schedule. The solution of the models would give the practical application a saving of 9.96% of the transportation costs every year.