Using Ant Colony Optimization to Solve a Vehicle Routing Problem: Waste Transportation Routes in Bengkulu City Case Study

Abstract

The waste problem is one of the serious problems faced by every city in Indonesia, including Bengkulu City. To overcome the problem of waste production which continues to increase every day, the government's role is needed in efforts to transport waste with various facilities and support from the surrounding community. One effort to solve the problem of waste piling up in Temporary Disposal Sites (TPS) is to schedule effective transportation to Final Disposal Sites (TPA). To do the scheduling, one possible approach is a mathematical approach. The purpose of this research is to build a Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) model using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), and determine the solution of this model to determine the optimal solution to the problem of transporting waste from all TPS to TPA. This research involved 29 TPS in Bengkulu City. This model is solved using Python 2.7 programming language and PuLP modeller and CPLEX Solver. With 2000 iterations, solutions were found in a relatively short time, which is less than 10 minutes. There are 6 garbage transportation routes in Bengkulu City which are considered as a VRP problem by using ACO which can transport garbage and considering the capacity of garbage trucks. From this route, a total distance of 128 km is obtained.