Apply Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm (ACO) For Vehicle Routing Problem With Time Windows In Food Industry: The Case Of Tho Phat food

Abstract

Nowadays, the sustainable and substantial growth in food industry that expanded the distribution of company based on most experience and made it more complicated. Consequently, the delivery takes significant cost and time to transport. This problem has been researching for many years to discover a method that can solve and support to make decision that would minimize the costs along with customers’ requirements. Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window (VRPTW) applying heuristic search and mathematical model to arrange the desired route to obtain the goal of minimal total cost. By using case study Tho Phat Food, which is big brand of many types of traditional cake, meat bun, especially in Viet Nam, proposes research framework with two methods to archive the solution, the first aim is to find exact solution by mix integer programming, second stage using heuristic searching tool based on Ant colony algorithm by Matlab software programming to apply with larger scale of customer. The results pointed out that the proposed model in this study helps company to improve the process of assigning driver of each type of vehicle with appropriate route. Keywords: VRPTW, Food Industry, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), Mix Integer Programming (MIP)