Vehicle routing system for daily meal delivery with motorcycles

Abstract

This thesis reports the development of a vehicle routing system for a daily breakfast delivery business. The business plans to hire motorcycles for the delivery operation which operates between 5:00 am to 6:30 am. The cost payable to each motorcycle employed consists of a fixed weekly fee and a charge that varies with the distance it travels in its delivery route specified by the company. The vehicle routing system aims to minimize the fleet size and the total travelling distance, which determine the cost of the delivery, with constraints on limited capacity and travelling time frame of each vehicle. The development process includes selection of the appropriate solution approaches, problem modelling, developing a computer program to solve the problem, data preparation, developing an operation procedure, and testing the system. The developed system applied the Savings algorithm and the A* search algorithm. The program was modified from an existing vehicle routing program for truck routing. The modified program was tested with published instances of the problem to verify that the developed system is effective and gives routing with small fleet size and short total delivery distance. In testing with survey data of 78 potential customers in the area of Rama IX Road, the system specified the use of four motorcycles. Each delivered 16, 29, 22 and 24 units respectively which did not exceed its capacity of 40 units. Each motorcycle delivered the meals to the last customer in 44 minutes, 1 hour 19 minutes, 1 hour, and 56 minutes respectively which are within the specified time frame. The system was also used to experiment for the possibility to improve results. It was found that it is possible to reduce the fleet size from four to three vehicles by relaxing the time frame or reducing the time spent at each drop off point.