City Delivery Routes Planning Based on the Ant Colony Algorithm

Abstract

For any company that sells its products in the networks of city stores, the urgent issue is the optimal delivery of their goods. During routing it is necessary to take into account many restrictions caused by specific conditions of transportation process in the city: number of cargoes, nature of cargoes, delivery time, structure of fleet and its presence, work time of enterprises for load matching, drivers’ working hours, loading capacity, road congestion etc. These days, the process of efficient manual routing is difficult because of many restrictions and delivery points wherein it is almost impossible to take into account the road congestion for specific routes. Today's companies are increasingly interested in outsourcing. One of the options for routes planning for enterprises is to use special software products that allow to plan optimal routes according to the chosen criteria and under specific conditions. The process of formation of routes using the Ant Logistics service, based on the Ant Colony optimization algorithm are analysed in the paper. Comparing the two options of forming routes to serve one of the largest retail chains in Kharkiv with the application of Ant Logistics service, it has been elucidated that the application of Ant Colony algorithm is more optimal than the Clarke-Wright algorithm based on delivery routes indicators.