DISTANCE OPTIMISATION OF MILK TRANSPORTATION FROM DAIRY FARMS TO A PROCESSOR OVER A NATIONAL ROAD NETWORK
Sean O’Callaghan, Declan O’Connor, David Goulding
Pages: 279-296
Published: 19 Jul 2018
Views: 1,553
Downloads: 698
Abstract: This paper presents an innovative desktop milk collection route simulation model. The simulation focuses on the development of an optimal routing plan for a designated fleet of articulated lorries (trucks) and purpose-built tankers used in the collection, transportation and varying seasonal delivery patterns of milk from farms to processors over a national road network vis-à-vis, the Irish road network. A brief background of the significant role that ever-evolving technology has had on the dairy industry is presented. Followed by an outline of the multi constituents that form the complex milk assembly process. We move on to describe a model which has been designed to robustly cater for the specific characteristics that uniquely occur within the Irish dairy industry. The research presented suggests the formulation of a paradigm to accommodate the dynamic nature of the Irish milk collection process. A modified adaptation of a more ubiquitous solution, that was devised to encompass a broad-spectrum approach tasked with the efficient solving of numerous variations of the well-known Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) across multiple environments, is implemented. Employing the widely used heuristic technique known as the large neighbourhood search (LNS) algorithm, a new model has been conceived and tested that allows for the formation of scheduled collection and delivery routes that can efficiently resolve routing problems that are distinctive to the dairy industry and principally those of the Irish industry. With issues such as Brexit now facing the Irish dairy industry this paper aims to put forward an efficient model to support those involved at various levels within the milk transportation sector of the industry. Furthermore, the model has been designed with the intention that future research can use this base model as a cornerstone for more in-depth research in the ever-evolving area of milk assembly.
Keywords: milk transportation, milk assembly, vehicle routing problem, simulation, large neighborhood search
Cite this article: Sean O’Callaghan, Declan O’Connor, David Goulding. DISTANCE OPTIMISATION OF MILK TRANSPORTATION FROM DAIRY FARMS TO A PROCESSOR OVER A NATIONAL ROAD NETWORK. Journal of International Scientific Publications: Agriculture & Food 6, 279-296 (2018). https://www.scientific-publications.net/en/article/1001640/
Back to the contents of the volume
© 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This permission does not cover any third party copyrighted material which may appear in the work requested.
Disclaimer: The Publisher and/or the editor(s) are not responsible for the statements, opinions, and data contained in any published works. These are solely the views of the individual author(s) and contributor(s). The Publisher and/or the editor(s) disclaim any liability for injury to individuals or property arising from the ideas, methods, instructions, or products mentioned in the content.