ANT COLONY METAHEURISTIC FOR THE INTEGRATED BIN PACKING-VEHICLE ROUTING WITH COVERAGE AREAS APPLIED TO SUPPLY LOGISTICS
Jose Rodriguez Melquiades
Department of Informatic, University National of Trujillo, Peru
Abstract: The population growth in urban areas has generated intense commercial activity in cities, so the delivery of consumer products and others must be done as fast as possible. In this context, an integrated Bin Packing-Vehicle Routing proposal is presented, with quantification of the CO2 generated by vehicles under a sales approach within a coverage area solved through the Ant Colony Optimization metaheuristic. The process, in a first level, consists of packing items in a group of bins located in a collection center. At level 2, by means of capacitated vehicle routing, the items are distributed to sales centers located in strategic places of a city, which will have the capacity to serve a group of customers located within a coverage area of the respective urban area. The proposal implemented in Python shows that its implementation provides good results as it happened when it was applied in the city of Trujillo, Peru.
Keywords: Bin packing, vehicle routing, Ant Colony Optimization, coverage area