LOCATING SUGAR CANE LOADING STATIONS UNDER VARIATIONS IN CANE SUPPLY

Supachai Pathumnakul (), Chatklao Sanmuang (), Nawapak Eua-Anant () and Kullapapruk Piewthongngam ()
Additional contact information
Supachai Pathumnakul: Supply Chain and Logistics System Research Unit, Faculty of Engineering, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand
Chatklao Sanmuang: Supply Chain and Logistics System Research Unit, Faculty of Engineering, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand
Nawapak Eua-Anant: Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand
Kullapapruk Piewthongngam: Esaan Center for Business and Economic Research, Faculty of Management Sciences, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand

Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research (APJOR), 2012, vol. 29, issue 05, 1-17

Abstract: This study addresses the problem of locating sugar cane loading stations and allocating cane fields to those stations. The problem is different from the general location–allocation problem in so far as this framework takes into account the different maturity periods of each cane field. If the loading station is improperly located, it can result in high transportation costs from cane fields to the station and significant fluctuations in the station utilization rate. A modification of the well-known "fuzzy c-means" (FCM) method, which takes into account both the cane supply and the different cane maturity periods, is proposed to solve this problem. The objective of the model is to minimize the sum of the transportation and station utilization costs. The performance of this method is compared to that of the traditional FCM method. The results show that the proposed approach is practical for solving the problem and that it provides a better solution than the FCM method.

Keywords: Sugar cane; location; allocation; fuzzy c-means; transportation; capacity utilization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217595912500285
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:apjorx:v:29:y:2012:i:05:n:s0217595912500285

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0217595912500285

Access Statistics for this article

Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research (APJOR) is currently edited by Gongyun Zhao

More articles in Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research (APJOR) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().