Planning of Vehicle Routes for the Exam Booklet Distribution: A GIS-based Solution Approach

Abstract

A vehicle routing problem (VRP) motivated by the case of examination booklet distribution is considered in this paper. In this practical and repetitive problem, the boxes include exam booklets that are taken from a depot in the university campus and distributed to the 49 exam buildings (schools) where the exams are held in. For the distribution, there are 18 vehicles with different box capacities. The exam is organized in four different sessions. Visiting the maximum three schools by each vehicle is one of the main constraints of the problem. This rich VRP variant concerns the capacitated heterogonous vehicle fleet, multi-distribution and a limited number of schools visited. Due to the complexity and NP-hardness of the problem, a geographic information system (GIS)-based solution approach, which uses a tabu search heuristic method, is applied to obtain an acceptable solution in a reasonable time. Our numerical results show that total traveled distance, average capacity utilization and the total number of routes are improved by 19.39%, 9.14%, and 9.38%, respectively, in comparison with the current distribution plan.