Transportation planning of milk in natura to supply the dairy industry in developing countries

In developing countries, dairy farms are scattered over extensive rural areas, with roads in precarious conditions, which impacts the product's final cost. The truck routes are currently planned by dividing the collecting area into smaller areas, without software's aid. This research proposes a strategy to plan the routes globally, considering the complete area to reduce the total transportation cost. A new metaheuristic algorithm and a mathematical model are proposed, based in the periodic vehicle routing problem with multi-trips, to plan the truck routes. Data from a Brazilian dairy farm were used to assess the strategy and apply the metaheuristic algorithm. Results showed that the routes planned by the proposed metaheuristic are shorter in distance than the routes done currently by the industry and that globally planning the routes may bring financial gains and improve the milk's quality by the reduction of travel time.