A plan for transportation and distribution the products based on multi-objective travelling salesman problem in fuzzy environmental

Abstract

Transportation and distribution are the most important elements in the work system for any company, which are of great importance in the success of the chain work. Al-Rabee factory is one of the largest ice cream factories in Iraq and it is considered one of the most productive and diversified factories with products where its products cover most areas of the capital Baghdad, however, it lacks a distribution system based on scientific and mathematical methods to work in the transportation and distribution processes, moreover, these processes need a set of important data that cannot in any way be separated from the reality of fuzziness industrial environment in Iraq, which led to use the fuzzy sets theory to reduce the levels of uncertainty. The decision-maker has several goals that he aspires to accomplish for two stages, so, the decision-maker adopted in his work system on a multi-objective travelling salesman problem. A network of paths for transportation and distribution of the products has been designed based on a multi-objective travelling salesman problem, by building a mathematical model that finds the best paths for each stage, taking into account the goals required by the decision-maker. The results obtained from the use of (Lingo) software showed the importance of these methods in determining the optimal path for the processes of collecting and transporting milk from their collection centers to the Al-Rabee factory as a first stage, as well as transporting the final products and distributing them from the Al-Rabee factory to the shopping centers as a second stage.