A multi-depot vehicle routing problem arising in the distribution of care and cleaning products: A cluster first-route second approach

Firms in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods sector need to make improvements in their supply chain, which is one of the most critical strategic areas, in order to differentiate from their competitors. The problem of transporting products to customers in dispersed geography is a complex problem that requires the evaluation of alternative routes. This study, it was aimed to determine the shipping routes for a large-scale care and cleaning products distributor to ship to 502 different customers in the eastern and southeastern regions of Turkey from its depots in 3 different locations. The problem is to determine which depot should serve which customers, including routing decisions, which is an example of the well-known Multi-Depot Vehicle Routing Problem (MDVRP). In this study, a cluster-first-route-second approach was adopted to solve the model. Capacitated P-Median formulation was used to cluster and assign customers for each depot. Then, Simulated Annealing Algorithm and Google OR-Tools were used to solve the resulting 3 single-depot Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problems. At the end of the study, the results of the shipment plans obtained with a Geographical Information System-based decision support system and Google OR-Tools were presented. In the last part, the findings are analyzed and discussed, and suggestions are given for future studies.