A Lean Scheme for Improving Vehicle Routing Operations

The Vehicle Routing Problem is well known in the Operations Research and Just in Time literature. From the O.R. point of view, the interest is concentrated on the development of algorithms to achieve an optimal solution to the problem with zero excess cost/distance/time. From the JIT literature, Vehicle routing is also known as a milk run and it is a fundamental element to enable JIT integration with suppliers. Under this approach, the routing operation should be as efficient or wasteless as possible. This work suggests to integrate both views; O.R. and JIT, into a comprehensive scheme that has the purpose of identifying and reducing waste. Examples of the application of the scheme are provided.