Multiple plants multiple sites ready mixed concrete planning using improved ant colony optimization

Abstract

The purposes of this paper were to optimize the schedule of dispatching Ready Mixed Concrete (RMC) trucks with multiple plants multiple construction sites (MPMS) in order to minimize the transportation cost under various construction constraints i.e., limited traveling, casting time, number of truck, allowable weight for transfer and distance from multiple RMC Batch plants to different construction sites using Improved Ant Colony Optimization (IACO). The IACO introduces some additional techniques for improvement of search processes such as neighborhood search and re-initializations. The procedures are: firstly, develop the mathematical model of MPMS for RMC truck schedule dispatching in term of an optimization problem. After that, use the IACO to solve the optimal schedule dispatching of RMC with MPMS and truck operation. To demonstrate the effectiveness of IACO, two different problems are tested, and its results are compared with those obtained by conventional approaches such as the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and the conventional Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Test results show that the IACO approach is relatively capable of delivering a higher quality solution, faster computation time, and efficiency schedule dispatch compared to traditional GA and ACO approaches.