JOINT OPTIMIZATION OF COLD-CHAIN PICK-UP VEHICLE ROUTING AND CARGO ALLOCATION FOR FRESH AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS

Abstract

As a bridge connecting agricultural production and consumption, the circulation of agricultural products has the function of connecting supply and demand, guiding production and promoting consumption. However, the development of rural logistics in China is slow, and most logistics centers still rely on experience to plan the pick-up vehicle routings, resulting in long transport time and high cost. In order to improve the efficiency of pick-up and reduce transportation costs, a joint optimization model of cold-chain pick-up vehicle routing and cargo allocation for fresh agricultural products was proposed in this study. Soft time window constraint and three-dimensional loading constraints were considered, and the lowest pick-up cost was used as optimization goals in this model. In addition, adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm (ALNS) and heuristic depth-first search algorithm (HDFS) were combined to solve the model. A case study of Kunming International Flower Auction Center was conducted to compare the schemes of pick-up vehicle routing before and after optimization. Results demonstrate that the pick-up cost after optimization decreases by 9.6 %, the number of vehicles decreases by one, the total volume utilization rate of vehicles increases by 23 %, and the total load utilization rate of vehicles increases by 15 %. This study provides a model reference and solution method for enterprise operators to formulate schemes of pick-up vehicle routing quickly and reasonably.