AN OPTIMIZATION APPROACH OF THE MULTI-COMPARTMENT VEHICLE ROUTING PROBLEM WITH SINGLE MULTIPLE SPLIT-PATTERN FOR FUEL OIL DELIVERY

摘要

This paper discusses a Multi-Compartment Vehicle Routing Problem (MC-VRP) with Split-Patterns (MC-VRP-SP). This MC-VRP focuses on the delivery of multiple types of fuel oil from tank farms to customer locations. The main objective of this MC-VRP is to minimize the total traveling cost. Multiple types of fuel oil are loaded to the vehicles having several capacities with various capacities of compartments. Then, two mathematical models are proposed to represent this MC-VRP-SP. The original customer demand is split according to the predetermined patterns so that it can be loaded to compartments appropriately. However, the split demands must be delivered by the same truck and one compartment can support only a single split demand. Optimization approach is utilized to solve these mathematical models. The computational time is limited. The numerical examples show that the optimization approach can yield us the optimal solutions only in small size problem. For large size problem, the optimization can determine the feasible solutions within given computational time. Therefore, a saving algorithm is used to separate the customers into clusters. Then each cluster is solved separately. The results show that this clustering can improve the solution for the large size problem.