Logistics forms a very important part of the Supply
Chain. Timely and adequate availability of raw materials
is essential for the production to run smoothly in any
factory. As discussed by Chopra and Meindl [1], Milk
Run is one of the common ways to facilitate material
transport from suppliers to the plant. The routing of the
Milk Run vehicles falls under the Vehicle Routing
Problem (VRP). In the specific case of JCB India Ltd.
(Ballabhgarh Plant), it comes under the scope of Vehicle
Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW) [2].
There has been significant work done in the area of Milk
Runs already, as noted by Brar et al [3]. Sadjadi et al [4]
have discussed minimizing the cost of the Milk Run
based on simultaneously minimizing the transportation
cost and the inventory costs, and have formulated the
problem as a mixed integer problem. They have proposed
a static solution to the problem of Milk Run route
allocation, whereas Du et al [5] look at the dynamic
solution, i.e real time dispatch of vehicles for optimized
performance of the system. We develop a new approach
for JCB’s logistics since their transportation system is
different from traditional Milk–Runs and cannot be
modelled by any existing work.