Abstract

ZAPATA-CORTES, Julián Andrés; VELEZ-BEDOYA, Ángel Rodrigo  and  ARANGO-SERNA, Martín Darío. Distribution process improvement in a transport company. Investig. adm. [online]. 2020, vol.49, n.126, 12608.  Epub Sep 11, 2020. ISSN 2448-7678.  https://doi.org/10.35426/iav49n126.08.

Transportation is a key activity for the competitive of companies, since it is responsible for around 50% of their logistics costs. The objective of this article is to present the application of an improvement method for the routing process in a courier company in Medellin-Colombia, in which an optimization method was used based on the Vehicle Routing Problem model with heterogeneous capacity. The main result is a 53% reduction in the distribution costs, being an original application in the Colombian transport sector, which can be easily replicable to other companies in the country and the region. Additional findings are obtained by reducing the number of vehicles, allowing reducing the negative impacts of transportation activities to society and the environment. The main limitation of the work is the complexity of the model that make it difficult the inclusion of other variables for its application in other companies and sectors.

Keywords : Logistics; vehicle routing; goods distribution; transportation costs; optimization; L81.

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