Title: Ready mixed concrete trucks scheduling for minimising fuel cost of ready mixed concrete trucks from multiple plants to multiple sites using bee algorithm

Authors: Nuntana Mayteekriengkrai; Wuthichai Wongthatsanekorn

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Thammasat University, Klongluang, Pathumthan, Thailand ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Thammasat University, Klongluang, Pathumthan, Thailand

Abstract: Currently, there is a high increase of ready mixed concrete (RMC) demand. Some RMC companies put a strategy to set up plants in different areas. An interesting problem is how to utilise RMC trucks among plants for different types of RMC to minimise total fuel cost of transportation. This research proposes applying bee algorithm (BA) to minimise fuel cost of RMC trucks scheduling from multiple plants to multiple sites (MPMS) for three concrete types which are floor, column and beam. The simulated results are demonstrated by varying customer order and distance between batch plants and construction sites in six case study problems. BA is compared with particle swarm optimisation (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA). The results indicate that BA outperforms GA and PSO in terms of accuracy and efficiency.

Keywords: fuel costs; cost reduction; multiple plants; multiple sites; MPMS; bees algorithm; concrete types; ready mixed concrete; RMC trucks; truck scheduling; heavy vehicles; metaheuristics; simulation; batch plants; construction sites; particle swarm optimisation; PSO; genetic algorithms.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2017.081909

International Journal of Operational Research, 2017 Vol.28 No.3, pp.327 - 347

Received: 12 Jul 2014
Accepted: 17 Jul 2014
Published online: 31 Jan 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article