Determining optimal production plant location and vehicle route in upstream supply chain network for date sap processing industry

Abstract

Bangladesh is blessed with various agro-based natural resources like Date sap, extracted from date trees. As this date sap is found in rural areas in large quantities annually but a very small fraction is converted into some value-added delicious foods at a domestic level while a large portion is left underutilized due to negligence, improper collection, and preservation system from the industry level. The processed delicious foods have conspicuous demand in the national market due to their nutritious value and the growth of the national economy. Despite its economic importance, very little researches have been conducted in this field for its industrial processing. So, this research implies to improve this straggled sector providing much attention for collecting raw sap from source and processing into value-added products from industrial level cost-effectively. The key objectives of this paper are to determine optimal facility location for processing date sap and set vehicle routes that can pick up date sap from source to processing plant simultaneously curtailing operational transportation costs. Initially, a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model is introduced to determine optimal facility location. Besides, the Large Neighborhood Search (LNS) algorithm has been used to find the optimal set of vehicle routes. This paper outlines a summary of final results that Jessore (A south-western city in Bangladesh) is an optimal plant location and 10 vehicles are necessary for covering 15 areas which ultimately optimize the total supply time, respecting constraints concerning routing, timing, capacity, and supply as well transportation costs.

Keywords

• agro-based natural resources
• nutrition content
• mixed integer linear programming (milp)
• large neighborhood search (lns)