GIS in Logistics and Transportation for a Dairy Co-Operative Society in Kenya

Abstract

Logistics has gained popularity among many business and production companies as a strategic function to gain competitive advantage. In agri-business such as dairy farming logistics tools are also being applied to their supply chain to address the chain costs and more importantly to improve their business efficiency as a whole. This is especially so in the area of transportation which comprises a large share of the companies’ costs. The collection of raw milk is a critical sector of the supply chain that needs to be addressed in order to improve the overall performance of the company. This study was carried out to address milk collection challenges of a local rural dairy company in Kenya. It involved the determination of optimal routes in a milk collection chain involving 10 routes and 40 collection centres. The milk processing factory, collection centres, road network, trading centres were mapped from both primary and secondary data sources. A topologically clean geometrical network dataset of the roads was created, together with vehicular information from the milk company, the most economical and efficient routes were determined through the application of vehicle routing problem (VRP) solution in a GIS environment. A comparison was undertaken to compare the current costs in terms of time and distance with those generated, which revealed a substantial saving in time and distance if the dairy could adopt the VRP solution. This is quite significant in light of the high fuel costs being experienced globally.