Redesign Of Dutch Mill Company Distribution Network

Dutch Mill Company has been using multi-vehicle logistic system to serve customers allover Thailand. As customers’ demands keep dynamically changing, the traditional way ofdepending on fixed routes and personal experience tends to prove sufficient, which to someextent influences the logistical effectiveness and efficiency. It is a Heterogeneous fleetVRP(HFVRP). In this paper the author takes fixed number of vehicles and the routingcost(multiply the cost variables by the distances between nodes) instead of fixedcosts(maintenance cost, labor force, etc.) into consideration, combining them with tabusearch and used them to daily optimize the logistics distribution for a month. The searchcovers350nodes in total, the number of clients delivered every day ranges from95to206. Inthe tabu search we get initial solutions first, then reform the routes with neighborhoodstructure, which consists of single insertion move double insertion move and swap move. Asfor the distances between nodes, the author uses simulated distances, namely distancescalculated with spherical distances and real distances presented by Google Maps API, withthe error of about8percent. In the process the author uses Microsoft SQL Server2008as adatabase, C#to do tabu search, Google Map API to get the real distance between nodes, andASP.NET to finish the demo. Finally the author is able to get the conclusion that by using themethod in this paper, we are able to cut the cost by at least18percent, at most50percent, and35percent on average.