Location Planning for Post Offices and Routing for Postal Parcels in Tehran

Abstract

One of the most important problems facing distribution companies is to find the best locations for depots and also proper routes for transportation vehicles in order to optimize their supply network. This study aims to examine the problem of location-routing for post offices in Tehran. To achieve this, a bi-objective location-routing problem is proposed. In order to make the problem more realistic, time constraints are taken into account. A suitable solution procedure on the basis of customized goal programming is developed to solve the proposed model. The proposed model and solution procedure are applied in post offices in Tehran, Iran. The results of proposed model show considerable savings in time and cost of planning in comparison with the current planning in the case. The proposed model can be applied in other cases such as location of garbage bins in city and routing of collecting vehicles. Other significant parameters in urban planning can be considered as uncertainty in this model in the future research. This model can be customized for whole of Iran and therefore, meta-heuristic methods can be used to solve the instances in large scale

Keywords

• location-routing problem
• bi-objective mathematical programming
• goal programming
• tehran post office