A GIS-based methodology for solving the capacitated vehicle routing problem with time windows: a real-life scenario

Abstract

Most companies, which need to distribute their production daily, solely rely on human judgment in scheduling customer orders by assigning a delivery vehicle and selecting the routes for those vehicles. With increasing demand, this approach quickly becomes error prone. In this study, we present analysis of a distribution system and propose a systematic approach to improve distribution of tasks using geographic information system (GIS). Specifically, ArcMap's network analyst tool is used in order to minimise total transportation costs and ensure workload balance. We incorporate dynamic traffic conditions, time windows, vehicle capacity and driver working hours into our model to present more realistic results. We compare the total transportation costs due to manual assignments with the costs obtained using our approach, in addition to proving the tool's validity for problems of a larger scale. Analysis is applied to a specific food catering company in order to illustrate the procedure in detail.