Floyd-Warshall Algorithm in Shortest Path Optimizations: Example of Logistics Centers

Abstract

Logistics centers are important facilities which served possible transportation methods together and and carried out activities in harmony with each other such as transportation, storage, handling, distribution, consolidation, customs clearance, sorting, import, export and transit transactions, insurance and banking, infrastructure services, consultancy and production, etc. Due to the continuous demand for freight, freight transportation must be realized uninterrupted, in the shortest way, and optimal in terms of fuel consumption and transportation time. In this study, the problem of transportation of freight trains to logistics centers by the shortest route is discussed. When the literature on logistics villages is scanned; The contributions of logistics centers to the logistics sector have been examined, their strengths and weaknesses have been tried to be revealed, and studies on suggestions for effective and efficient operation have been observed. But in this study; with an engineering applications approach to the subject, it is aimed to obtain the most appropriate result for the route selection among the logistics centers by including twelve logistics centers operating throughout the country as well as seven logistics centers that are in the construction and tender stages, in the scope of the study. In generally the application area of the shortest path problems is to determine the shortest distance between the points in a network, the Floyd-Warshall Algorithm is preferred in this study in terms of determining the shortest path between any two nodes in the network. For this purpose, a graph consisting of a total of 33 nodes was created for the national railway network and the Floyd-Warshall algorithm was coded in the Python programming language to calculate the shortest route and the shortest route were determined between a total of nineteen logistics centers.