Modelling of multi depot vehicle routing problem with ant colony optimization and a solution approach

Vehicle Routing Problem is the problem of defining the vehicle routes for a company to serve its customers with minimum costs considering some operational constraints. Vehicle Routing Problem is directly concerned with the transportation which is one of main decision areas both in Supply Chain Management and in Logistics as a part of Supply Chain Management. Lots of various constraints and differences in real world applications brought together the variety in Vehicle Routing Problem and caused the investigations of Vehicle Routing Problems which have different properties and constraints in articles and applications. The Multi Depot Vehicle Routing Problem appeared from the idea of compensation of the customer demands from more than one depots located in different places according to the customers instead of compensating from one depot to supply a higher quality of service with a lower cost and in a shorter time period. Many of deterministic and heuristic solution methods are proposed to solve the Vehicle Routing Problem which is an important factor in logistics costs and especially nowadays the metaheuristic solutions are intensified. Ant Colony Optimisation is a metaheuristic solution which is developed by the inspiration of real ants. In this study, the Ant Colony Optimisation is profitted to solve the Multi Depot Vehicle Routing Problem.Keywords: Vehicle Routing Problem and derivatives, Vehicle Routing Problem Soution Technics, Ant Colony Optimisation.