Finding suitable paths to delivery molasses cargoes in Thailand : a case study

Abstract

This research aims to study suitable routes for the transportation of molasses in Thailand for making a decision of considering the transport route of molasses from the origin factory to the destination factory at a certain distance for shortest and most suitable paths. This research collects the locations of 58 sugar factories and 23 molasses end-users and including one public warehouse. The method applied the secondary data to find the minimize distance routes by considering distance within 400 km. The analysis is using Geographic Information System. The analysis results show the ranking of the destination factories from the nearest to the furthest distance of each origin factory. Therefore, this ranking is a model to compare with the current route of the company. After comparing, the current molasses transportation found mostly the company chose the appropriate route from the origin factory as Phitsanulok Sugar and Prachuap Industry. However, the other five origin factories chose not suitable route such as Thai Rungruang Sugar Industry, Rayong sugar, Khonburi Sugar and Mitr Kasetr.