Authors:
Pedro J. S. Cardoso
1
;
Gabriela Schütz
1
;
Jorge Semião
2
;
Jânio Monteiro
2
;
João Rodrigues
1
;
Andriy Mazayev
1
;
Emanuel Ey Vieira
1
;
Micael Viegas
1
;
Carlos Neves
3
and
Sérgio Anastácio
3
Affiliations:
1
University of the Algarve, Portugal
;
2
University of the Algarve and INESC-ID, Portugal
;
3
Business Solutions, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Enterprise Resource Planning, Vehicle Routing Problem, Geographical Information, Application Programming Interface, Data Acquisition.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applications
;
Pattern Recognition
;
Sensor Networks
;
Web Applications
Abstract:
i3FR is a system for optimizing the distribution of fresh goods, using a fleet of vehicles, which must be integrated
with an existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, while avoiding disruption of established
schedules and procedures. In terms of delivery optimization, the most similar problem in literature is the wellestablished
and experimented Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW), which is, by nature,
a multiple objective problem where the number of vehicles and the total traveled distance must be minimized.
In this paper, the overall architecture of the i3FR system is presented, which includes several modules and
services (such as ERP, routing optimization and data acquisition modules), and the communication between
them. The novelty in the proposed architecture comprises: (i) the application to a fresh goods distribution
network, with multiple restrictions on goods’ acclimatization; (ii) a data acquisition system which includes
vehicle data and environmen
tal data from the vehicles’ refrigerated volumes, such as temperature; and (iii) the
integration of the VRPTW optimization system with an existing ERP. A case-study is described and validates
the overall implementation. The main contribution of paper is the proposal of a multi-layered architecture to
integrate existing ERP software with a route optimization and a temperature data acquisition module.
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