Strategic delivery route scheduling for small geographic areas

The delivery scheduling process of a regional wholesaler was analyzed in order to develop a more strategic scheduling program. The strategic schedule was designed to utilize weekly demand history, opposed to daily demand, in order to decrease small batch deliveries, aid in store inventory management and foster customer relations. This was accomplished with a linear mathematical program, which produced a standard weekly schedule. A metric for the maximum days between deliveries was developed to show the improved delivery day distribution. For the 30 stores analyzed, the average maximum days between deliveries fell from 5.04 days to 3.37 days. The decreased time between deliveries will assist the small stores in inventory management. Additionally, the standardized schedule will allow storeowners and truck drivers to develop a productive relationship, which should be able to decrease delivery time and grow customer relations.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Gilchrist, David, S.B. (David J.). Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chris Caplice.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/98963

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/98963