Solving a Green Vehicle Routing Problem Considering Urban Traffic Condition and Fuel Consumption Reduction in Distribution of Perishable Products

Nowadays, transportation and logistics are considered as the drivers of economic development in the countries due to their impacts on the main variables of the country's economy such as production, employment, price, and cost of living Index. Statistics indicate that fuel consumption is a significant part of transportation costs. On the other hand, vehicles traffic is also one of the main factors affecting the travel time of vehicles between demand points in a supply chain, increasing fuel consumption and, consequently, damaging effects of greenhouse gases. In this paper, a novel model of vehicle routing problem (VRP) is presented with respect to different urban traffic conditions (no traffic, light traffic, semi-heavy traffic, heavy traffic) and fuel consumption, according to the time windows of services for perishable products. In order to solve the problem and validate the proposed model, CPLEX solver of GAMS software is used. Finally, a case study with a sensitivity analysis is solved and analyzed in order to investigate the applicability of the proposed model, and the optimal management policies are described.