Study on cold chain logistics of vehicle routing problem for agricultural products

With the continuous improvement of people´s living standard, the demand for Chinese cold chain agricultural products achieves rapid growth. However, at present, the cold chain logistics system of Chinese agricultural products are not perfect and its development is impaired. The distribution route optimization is studied to save cost and improve the quality of cold chain logistics services for agricultural products. It takes vehicle routing problem between distribution center and supermarkets for cold chain logistics of agricultural products for example. The saving method and the ant colony algorithm are applied to calculate the length of the routes for the respective distribution plan. Through analyzing the calculated results of these two algorithms, this assay discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the two algorithms on vehicle routing problem. Therefore, it provides a reference for goods in design of distribution plan in future.