Case Article—Route Planning at an Animal Husbandry Department

The case provides an opportunity for undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students to demonstrate a practical application of supply chain modeling in the area of livestock management for a group of rural communities in India. An animal husbandry department needs to ensure timely replenishment of liquid nitrogen to several livestock locations to preserve semen straws, which are frozen for artificial insemination. The department wishes to explore a possible route redesign for cost reduction. The description in the case, as well as the presented data, is based on a real project undertaken by the authors. The case enables students to conceptualize and design sample routes manually to meet the cost objective. However, the main objective is to make students understand and implement solution heuristics for large-scale vehicle routing problems. It also allows students to compare various designs trying not only possible vehicle capacities but also three solution heuristics. Nevertheless, students can also realize the importance of the spreadsheet as a decision support tool for evaluating several options by integrating the chosen heuristic. An important milestone of the case project was the implementation of our recommendations by the animal husbandry department.