Determination of optimal distribution route at the LPG gas cylinder distribution using vehicle routing problem

Indonesia is known as an oil producer, and the Indonesian government has been actualizing the non-stop use of LPG for decades. The need for LPG gas cylinders is continuously increasing so that the companies engaged in LPG marketing compete with each other to meet consumer demand. Efficient and targeted distribution is the primary goal of the company. The problem that often occurs is the LPG gas distribution system from the supplier’s hand to the consumer’s hand is not optimal. An optimal distribution system can be obtained from good supply chain management. This study examines one company that acts as an agent for LPG gas cylinders in Medan city. In the marketing of LPG products aspect, refilling LPG cylinders for resale requires empty cylinders obtained from consumers. The company does not make distribution plans, so distribution takes a long time. This study aims to build a transportation route optimization model to deliver empty LPG cylinders and return empty LPG cylinders, perform optimization, and provide alternative transportation routes to LPG agents based on the optimization results obtained. This research was developed with the Vehicle Routing Problem model using the Branch and Bound method. The transportation fleet operated by the company is a motorbike with a power of 5 boxes and a pickup with a capacity of 80 tubes. The objective function, in this case, is to minimize the travel time by considering the vehicle capacity. The transportation route optimization model has been successfully built and translated so that the optimization of all vehicles produces an optimal global solution every day obtained by the advent of multi-tour on motorcycles except pickups. Based on the data time obtained, it can be more efficient to save time in serving all-tube collections from consumers after analyzing the motorcycle fleet. This can be used as a choice for companies to determine transportation routes and time minimization.