Logistics optimization for Circular Economy: A vehicle route planning based analysis

The main aim of this dissertation was to create effective and budget friendly vehicle routes for the removal of animal byproducts which fall under the risk category one in response to the allegation made by the European Free Trade and Association (EFTA) court on Iceland for not following the protocols with regard to this matter. Furthermore, determining number of vehicles and finding the ideal location for factory set up were other main tasks in this research. In addition to this, primary research method was Open door logistics, a tool to create advance vehicle routing. The key methodology used was to create routed based on the one-day, two-day and three day-demand. This was done by first calculating the cycle time. Thereafter, cycle time was used to calculate the visit frequency by utilizing the randbetween function in excel to have the demand specific routes. Thereafter, 40 different scenarios were listed based on demand, number of vehicles, time limit within with each entire process should be finished and all scenarios were then simulated in ODL to test their feasibility. After running the simulation 7 scenarios were found out to be feasible which were then compared on the basis costs, vehicles used. However, since cost was most imperative key performance indicator the scenario with the least cost was selected to be the optimal solution which came out be scenario 16. Thus, it was concluded that the operations should run every three days, with six vehicles in use, costing roughly around 796,000 euros/year, whereas, Dysnes in the Northern Iceland was selected as the potential location for the factory installation.