Optimization of the Supply of Components for Mass Production with the Use of the Ant Colony Algorithm

The paper raises the issue of adapting the logistics processes to the changes in the manufacturing area. The continuous improvement of production processes enforces searching for better solutions for the milk run to achieve shorter time of the milk run loop. In the paper we propose integer linear programming (ILP) model ant the intelligent ant-colony based meta-heuristic algorithm for the milkman problem. The tuning process of algorithm and the verification of algorithm performance are reported in the paper. Proposed algorithm is then utilized for solving real-life production line provisioning problem.