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Improving the Efficiency and Effectiveness of the School Bus Routing Problem

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1.0 INTRODUCTION
The Oxford dictionary (2014) defines a route as a path for getting to a certain destination from a start off point. The world is a global market and the journey of continuous expansion is on the rise. The demand for goods and services span from within immediate environments but also transcend cities, borders and continents. Logistics and transportation is a crucially important part of the manufacturing process, however the focus of this report is not on the supply chain from manufacturer to consumer but focuses on the management of logistics and transportation under the School Bus routing Problem. Logistics Management can be defined as the process of planning, control and application of an operational and cost conscious …show more content…

The SBRP however belongs to a larger class dubbed the Vehicle routing Problem (VRP).
The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) can be defined as a logistics problem that involves the design of best possible routes for the pickup and delivery of students from a start off point to a destination, where each student is dispersed over a large area. (Laporte, 1992)
There are various problems associated with the VRP, these problems include; Capacitated VRP, VRP with Time windows and VRP with pickup and delivery to name a few. The Vehicle routing problem has several variations. Some of these variations are;
- School Bus Routing Problem (SBRP)
- Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP)
- Capacitated VRP (CVRP) (Toth and Vigo, 2002).
The SBRP has been dealt extensively in various literature, although approaching the problem in different ways.
Newton and Thomas (1974) where one of the first authors to tackle the SBRP, however their theory strongly supported the concept of a homogeneous fleet of vehicles.
Preparation of data, selection of bus stops, generating bus route, adjusting the school bell time and scheduling the route was applied in a paper where the above listed items were treated separately and then addressed in that particular order (Desrosiers et al., 1981). As

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