Localização de centros de distribuição: avaliação comparativa entre a meta heurística GRASP do TRANSCAD e uma modelagem de programação linear.

Abstract

Brazil is one of the largest world producers of agricultural products. However, a significant part of the production is waste, especially in the transport from the source producers to the market consumers. This causes higher costs to the Brazilian products in internal and foreign markets, reducing the national competitiveness in this sector. Therefore, an appropriate distribution strategy can help to reduce these costs, making more efficient the production flows. An important step in this strategy consists of to determine scientifically the number and location of distribution centers. The methods used to solve this distribution problem are linked to three groups: exact, heuristic and simulation. This paper presents a comparative analysis between an exact method (linear programming) and a heuristic method, both applied to the location problem of distribution centers for the melon product in the Agricultural District of Baixo Jaguaribe, State of Ceará, Brazil. Both methods just minimize the transport costs of the melon from the cities in the Agricultural District to the market consumers. Results show better performance to the linear programming method than to the greed heuristic method.