Strategic Planning and Vehicle Routing Algorithm for Newspaper Delivery Problem: Case study of Morning Newspaper, Bangkok, Thailand
Keywords:
Sweep Algorithm, Vehicle Routing problem, Heuristic, Newspaper Distribution Problem (NDP).Abstract
In this paper, the vehicle routing problem and one of its variants, the vehicle routing problem with Time window
(VRPTW) is studied. In the vehicle routing problem, a set of vehicles with limited capacity, are to be routed from a central depot to a
set of geographically dispersed customers with known demands and predefined time windows. The VRPTW is NP-hard and best
solved to optimum or near optimum is heuristic, so to solve this NP-hard vehicle problem Sweep Algorithm is developed. Our
research aims to examine distribution problem of a morning newspaper and to minimize the total cost without violating the capacity
and time window constraints. The problems consist of vehicle departure times, the routing of vehicles, the location of distribution
centers and drop-off points and allocating drop-off points to distribution centers. Results provide evidence of the dramatic impact on
costs achieved by developing routing and dispatching schedule simultaneously
