Location Selection and Vehicle Routing for Tapioca Starch Production Industries in North-Eastern of Thailand by Using Ant Colony Optimization

Abstract

Location selection problem is a major problem and the first issue that investors need to make decisions, including the vehicle routing problem. The answer to the Location selection problem will affect the vehicle routing. The solution to the location routing problem will have long term effect on the plant. Therefore, in this research, we develop a heuristic called Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) that simulates a food seeking behaviors of ants to solve for a suitable location of a tapioca starch plant and also to construct a vehicle route for delivering products and collecting raw material. The procedure of ACO can be divided into 2 parts. The first part is to find the solution of the location problem (LP), the location of the tapioca starch plant and the second part is to solve the vehicle routing problem (VRP) whose solution is related to the location of the tapioca starch plant. To improve the solution of VRP, three local search methods that are One Move, Exchange and 2-Opt Move are applied. We find the location of the tapioca starch plant for two cases: the production runs with 100% and 50% of the production capacity, and the travel distance of each vehicle is limited to 800 kilometers per day. The best location of the plant is in Tambon Muang, Ampur Kantharalak, Sisaket Province for the production runs with 100% of the production capacity and Tambon Siwichain, Ampur Nam Yuen, Ubonratchathani Province for the production runs with 50% of the production capacity and the total travel distance for a fleet of vehicles is 28,214.7 and 10,740.1 kilometers respectively.