A solution approach for solving the location routing problem of the central rubber market

Abstract

At present, the central rubber market system is still inefficient, especially when it comes to aspects of the difficulty of transportation for certain rubber sellers moving their wares to the central rubber market, because their plantations are far from the central market, and in addition, rubber selling prices are unfair. Therefore, the researchers have designed an algorithm by applying Tabu Search to find the solution to solving location selection problems of rubber purchasing depots replacing the central rubber market and managing vehicle routes from it to the rubber purchasing depot, where the owner must be a member of the Office of Rubber Replanting Aid Fund (ORRAF) or of the Rubber Plantation Fund Cooperative. The capacity of the purchasing location is divided into three types, small size (10 tons), medium size (25 tons) and large size (50 tons), with truck capacities of two sizes, namely, 20 tons maximum and 25.5 tons maximum. The testing results found that the selection of appropriate purchasing depots and the management of appropriate vehicle routes consist of establishing purchasing depots at seven points, along with vehicle capacity of less than 25 tons, leading to a minimum cost of 58,110.58 baht/day.