Track: Undergraduate Student Paper Competition

Abstract

This document presents a research project that consisted of verifying the logistical viability of centralizing warehouses in a construction company called Vidusa. The project was carried out in stages, the first stage consisted in structuring the statement of the problem by collecting as much relevant information as possible through interviews, observation and historical data such as volume flow of building materials, the location of the warehouses, the home construction projection, etc. in order to understand the processes of the company and how it operates;  The next stage consisted in analyzing the information, first, to find out where to put the centralized warehouse, the median p model was used, which seeks to minimize the distance between warehouses taking into account the construction of houses per year in each construction site. This model was run in Python, in a Google library called Or-Tools, which allows to run Mixed Integer Problems (MIP). Once the location of the new centralized warehouse was selected, the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW) was run to find out the route to follow to deliver the building materials to the construction site. In which the number of vehicles, the delivery time windows of each site, the daily volumetric demand and the volumetric capacity of the vehicle were taken into account. Restrictions were added so the model could decide whether or not to visit a construction site and for the number of vehicles to use. The model was also run in Python. Once done the analysis of the operations and the supplies used in the constructions of housing along with the results obtained in the mathematical model, the project proceeded with the design of the warehouse in FactoryCAD using as template an actual warehouse that Vidusa already owns. On this design were considered the changes the actual process will have, like the use of a loading dock for each of the routes the warehouse will have, this to facilitate the load of the trucks. Also how the supplies will be transported and organized inside the warehouse. The feasibility of the project was determined by comparing the costs of the initial investment and the costs of the operations involved in the current situation versus the proposed solution. The costs compared were the price of the equipment required (e.g. cantilevers, vehicles, lift trucks, etc.), the maintenance, services, fuel, among others. The analysis was carried out by simulating 5 years of the two scenarios and verifying if the proposed solution would impact the operating and investment cost of the current situation by reducing them.