Investigation of Ready Mixed Concrete Transportation Problem Using Linear Programming and Genetic Algorithm

Abstract

Ready-mixed concrete (RMC) is one of the most common building material for construction industry for nearly all developed and developing countries. Generally, because of the technical requirements, concrete must be mixed in a batch plant and transported to the construction site. There are two important factors affected the cost of RMC: raw material cost and transportation cost. Additionally, transportation cost is also included when determining the unit price of RMC. However, profitability affects adversely in the case of long distance between the plant and construction site. For these reason, distribution of RMC from supply to the demand points with minimum cost is aimed in this study. This work contributes to both modelling and dispatching of RMC as an optimization problem by applying linear and heuristic methods. For this purpose, as an example, an urban area which divided into 7 districts and contained 4 concrete batch plants is discussed. Linear programming and genetic algorithm were applied to solve this problem and compared each other under the same conditions. The result shows linear programming is more efficient for this application because of the limited constraints and variables.