Optimizing the drinking water gallon distribution using vehicle routing problems with pick-up and delivery approach (Case Study of Berkah RO Drinking Water Depot)

Abstract

Distribution activities play an essential role in the industry nowadays. Every company will design new effective and efficient strategies to improve its distribution systems, such as route selection, scheduling the number of vehicles, and many others. The optimal route selection model is an adequately considered issue in product distribution. The problem model commonly arises in the distribution activity is the vehicle routing problem (VRP). This distribution problem model also occurred in one of the drinking water gallon companies, Berkah RO Drinking Water Depot, where they still subjectively selected the route. In addition, the factor of damaged vehicles causes some demands for water gallons not to be fulfilled. The problem in this company is categorized as a vehicle routing problem (VRP) model with pick-up and delivery. This research uses a saving matrix and nearest-neighbor methods to solve the problem of determining the optimal vehicle route. An application is then developed based on the algorithm for determining the optimal vehicle route with a saving matrix and nearest-neighbor methods. This application aims to acquire faster results than manual calculations if each customer's demand changes. The final result of this research is determining the optimal vehicle routing with the shortest distance considering the arrival and departure time allocation and total distribution cost.