A Vehicle Routing Problem Arising in the Distribution of Higher Education Institutions Exam Booklets

Abstract

In this paper, the exam booklet distribution plan for the Higher Education Institutions Exam (HEIE) is studied. The accurate distribution plan is important to decrease the transportation cost and use the capacity efficiently. The exam booklets distribution should be considered as capacitated vehicle routing problem (VRP). In this context, the aim of this paper is minimizing the cost/distance of distribution from the depot where exam booklets are kept to the schools with capacitated vehicles. The case of Gaziantep city with 135 nodes (one depot and 134 schools) is considered. To model and solve the problem, a mixed integer programming (MIP) model is developed and applied. Due to large size of the problem, the VRP tool of Esri ArcGIS (well-known geographic information system (GIS) software) and OR-tool of Google are also applied to get an acceptable solution in a reasonable time. Finally, the proposed three distribution plans are compared each other and the results are discussed. Our numerical results show that the tools of Esri ArcGIS and OR-tool of Google decreases the total route distance by 8.21% and 3.02% compared to the MIP model, respectively. One of the main contributions of the paper is to show the applicability of network analyst tool of Esri ArcGIS and OR-tool of Google on a real-case CVRP.