Optimal Model of Fleet Vehicle Routing for Poultry Meat Distribution in Tehran City with Multi-Depot Mode and Time Window Constraint

Transportation is a field of service with a significant role in the cycle of all goods and services from production to consumption. This is especially true for perishable goods like poultry meat, the distribution of which becomes even more important for major cities. The purpose of this study was to design a model for heterogeneous multi-depot transport fleet routing with due consideration of the limited time window (FSMTW) in the form of patterns mixed integer linear programming (MILP). For this purpose, the model was designed according to the daily demand of poultry markets of Tehran Municipality in 2013. Routing pattern was examined for three different days. The results showed that the model designed could significantly reduce transportation costs, so that it reduced costs for three studied testing days by 29.56, 27.91 and 32.58 percent (i.e. 16698, 14596 and 14116 thousand IR rials), respectively, compared to the existing transportation conditions. Therefore, it was suggested that Tehran Municipality use the system for registering and distribution of the demand as well as using the designed models for the distribution of poultry meat to reduce the logistics costs.