Abstract
In the Sri Lankan logistics industry, delivery route planning is a very important and critical task. It requires many skilled labours and is time-consuming as well. The project aims to develop a Dynamic Route Planning (DRP) Algorithm to computerize the task and make it fast and efficient. The system comprises many features, including identifying the fastest route to deliver goods to all the given delivery locations (drop points). It also captures the cargo volume, vehicle capacity and provides an indication of the number of vehicles required to complete the full delivery by running a calculation using the volume of the cargo and truck capacity. The biggest challenge faced in developing the algorithm is calculating the distance among the delivery locations electronically. There are many electronic maps found online but each one has its own drawbacks. Most of the maps do not get an update very frequently, and changes on roads are not available. There are some maps, which are restricted to use in certain countries and not allowed to use worldwide. The algorithm and application what this project expecting to develop must be available to use in any country. Finally, we derived to a point where we can use Google maps which has minimal negative points. This project uses Google Maps as a tool when it is calculating the distances between two points, and inbuilt intelligence of Google Maps to identify the fastest route between two delivery points (drop points). At the beginning of the development of the algorithm, knowledge extracted by studying Dijkstra’s Algorithm, which is used in Google Maps, supported to identify the direction of experiments. There are certain limitations in the use of Google Map APIs. As well as the number of hits made per day in the free version is limited and identifying different graded roads such as “A” & “B” are some of them. Users can upload the details of the cargo and delivery location (drop point) details to the application. The application will then generate the fastest route in a report form or plotted in the map.
Highlights
The business who is doing B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Customer) are using third party logistics providers to provide services for their business
If the warehouse missed the scheduled delivery date when they dispatch the order, the order will be delivered by the other week as a result the delivery is delayed by a week. This delay can be a week if the distribution company maintains a weekly schedule
To get the support of Google Maps, it is necessary to learn about the Google Developer Console
Summary
The business who is doing B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Customer) are using third party logistics providers to provide services for their business. Most of the distribution companies, maintain delivery schedules with static routes. When we analyze this distribution methodology and after talking to industry experts, we have identified, these scheduled deliveries can lead to customer dissatisfactions [1]. If the warehouse missed the scheduled delivery date when they dispatch the order, the order will be delivered by the other week as a result the delivery is delayed by a week. This delay can be a week if the distribution company maintains a weekly schedule. If they are maintaining monthly schedules, that can lead to a one-month delay as well
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