Process Capability Indices for Dairy Product’s Temperature Control in Dynamic Vehicle Routing

During a delivery process, and in the global transportation network chain, milk and dairy products are considered as sensible and so a higher requirement must be imposed. This paper addresses a vehicle routing problem and propose an optimization model that consider the temperature as a source of uncertainty that has an impact on dairy products. Temperature is maintained and controlled within specified interval and limits, using some sensors introduced inside the vehicles. The process capability indices are introduced to measure the capability of the process, especially thermal characteristics. Dynamic Vehicle Routing (DVR) is presented in this work, optimizing both of the distance traveled and product’s temperature. The objective is to deliver products to different BIM stores in El Jadida city, and find the optimal route while maintaining the dairy product Temperature in their optimal values. We propose then a developed algorithm using the meta-heuristic Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm. Numerical results show the optimized route sequence and also the optimized product’s temperature along the route.