Article ID: | iaor20162705 |
Volume: | 67 |
Issue: | 7 |
Start Page Number: | 1012 |
End Page Number: | 1024 |
Publication Date: | Jul 2016 |
Journal: | Journal of the Operational Research Society |
Authors: | Bekta Tolga, Tunalolu Renan, Ko ar |
Keywords: | production, location, vehicle routing & scheduling, combinatorial optimization, heuristics |
The process by which olive oil is produced yields two by‐products, one of which is the brown‐coloured Olive Oil Mill Wastewater (OMWW) and has no direct use. OMWW is generally disposed of into soil or rivers, potentially contaminating the environment. OMWW can be treated using ultrafiltration facilities, but this requires that OMWW is collected from oil mills and delivered to the treatment facilities using a fleet of vehicles in an economically viable manner. Such considerations give rise to a multiperiod location‐routing problem. This paper formally introduces the problem and proposes an adaptive large neighbourhood search metaheuristic for its solution. The algorithm is applied on a case study drawn from one of the major olive oil producing countries. The paper presents computational and managerial results.