Optimal Routing in Supply Chain Aimed at Minimizing Vehicle Cost and Supply

Transportation plays a vital role in supply chain. An inefficient transportation system disrupts supply chain and imposes severe damages to it. This paper investigates a transportation model with a limited number of vehicles with different capacities. The vehicles are used to handle raw and semi-finished materials from contractors' warehouses to the main factories and to transport finished products to the warehouses of the distribution companies. The main purpose was to cover all transportation requests in a manner that it results in a reduced transportation cost, a reduced use of rental vehicles, and a reduced stopping duration of vehicle in destinations through the optimal use of available resources. In the considered model, first, a web-based system was designed in order to enable the registration of handling requests in the system with the purpose of compensating vehicle shortage. The handling requests are confirmed by drivers and transportation companies through SMS, email, and internet. Then, the proposed model performs network routing in order to completely cover the transportation network and to reduce transportation costs and vehicles stopping duration in destination. Finally, the model was run in different conditions, and the possibility of increasing vehicles with the purpose of reducing costs was studied. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.