a b s t r a c t
In this paper a decision support system to solve the problem of hen allocation to hen houses with the aim
of minimizing the total cost is described. The total cost consists of farm utilization cost, hen transportation
cost, and loss from mixing hens at different ages in the same hen houses. Clustering of hen houses
using the traditional Growing Neural Gas (GNG) was first determined to allocate hens to the hen houses
effectively. However, the traditional GNG often solves the clustering problem by considering distance
only. Therefore the hybrid Growing Neural Gas (hGNG) considering both the distance from the centroids
of the clusters to the hen houses and the weights of hen house sizes was proposed to solve the problem.
In the second phase, allocating and determining routes to allocate hens to the hen houses using the nearest
neighbor approach were carried out in order to minimize the total distance. The performance of the
algorithm was measured using the relative improvement (RI), which compares the total costs of the
hGNG and GNG algorithms and the current practice. The results obtained from this study show that
the hGNG algorithm provides better total cost values than the firm’s current practice from 7.92% to
20.83%, and from 5.90% to 17.91% better than the traditional GNG algorithm. The results also demonstrate
that the proposed method is useful not only for reducing the total cost, but also for efficient management
of a poultry production system. Furthermore, the method used in this research should prove beneficial to
other similar agro-food sectors in Thailand and around the world.