See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/325077024

OPTIMIZATION OF READY-MIX CONCRETE DELIVERY OPERATIONS FROM

MULTIPLE SOURCES TO VARIABLE CONSTRUCTION SITES

Conference Paper · May 2018

CITATIONS READS

0 187

2 authors:

Ahmad Khartabil Evan Paleologos

Abu Dhabi University Abu Dhabi University
5 PUBLICATIONS   1 CITATION    150 PUBLICATIONS   310 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Fundamentals of Geoenvironmental Engineering View project

Water Resources, Desalination, and Water Budget of United Arab Emirates View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Evan Paleologos on 11 May 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

OPTIMIZATION OF READY-MIX CONCRETE DELIVERY OPERATIONS
FROM MULTIPLE SOURCES TO VARIABLE CONSTRUCTION SITES

Ahmad Khartabil1 and Evan K. Paleologos2,3

1
Technical Manager, Transgulf Ready Mix, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2
Department of Civil Engineering, Abu Dhabi University, Abu Dhabi, UAE
3
Corresponding author: evan.paleologos@adu.ac.ae

Abstract: Construction constitutes the largest economic sector after oil and gas in the Gulf
region. Operational efficiency is hampered, among others, by scheduling and planning concrete
deliveries simultaneously to different construction sites from different batching plant locations,
with variable distances and operating costs to be considered, while at the same time meeting
concrete scheduling onsite, required casting rates, etc. This always creates conflicts for ready-
mix companies and leads to decisions that are not efficient or profitable. Our study focuses on a
real and daily problem of the simultaneous supply of concrete from different locations to two
structural elements while achieving the project’s requirements and minimizing the concrete
company’s operation cost.

Key words: Linear Programming, Ready-Mix Concrete, Multiple Batching Locations, Multiple
Construction Sites
 Page 2 of 6

1 Introduction

The ready-mix concrete manufacturers’ business involves different variables and tasks, such as
design, production and supply of concrete mixtures to contractors as per project specification
and application, construction site distance, required casting time, etc. Arranging different
activities – especially simultaneous ones – becomes very difficult to prioritize. Therefore,
operation cost optimization and scheduling for concrete production and deliveries are commonly
not set to optimum procedures or to maximizing company profit (Maghrebi and Sammut, 2015).

The objective is to minimize the cost and increase the profit during concrete casting by the right
utilization of time, equipment, and manpower. In order to serve this objective the linear
programming method was utilized in a real life application. Hamad (2016) stated that this
method gained its importance in optimization applications because of the ease with which a
number of practical problems in operations can be cast in a linear programming framework of
optimizing a linear objective function subject to linear constraints. One of the key issues in ready
mix concrete plants in addition to the above considerations is the desire to find the best
allocation of delivery trucks to depots and to customers so that the transportation costs are
minimized (Narayanan et al., 2015)..

Kozniewski and Orlowski (2010) developed three models to solve the localization problem of
concrete mix production plants, where a considerable influence of fixed costs on plant
functioning costs, demand and environment was considered. Gomez and Moon (2017) used
linear programming to create a model that determined the best location of new concrete
dispatching stations by incorporating information on the actual production capacity of existing
plants, in the desirable locations and related regulation laws. Albayrak and Albayrak (2016)
compared linear programming to genetic algorithms in order to solve a direct cost optimization
problem of supplying concrete from different locations to a single construction site.

This paper addresses a real application for daily ready-mix plants, which is supplying different
large concrete pouring at the same time, while maximizing profit by utilizing the equipment
efficiency of pumps and plants, and reducing cost at both plant and site by the use of
mechanical distributor based on the sites conditions, equipment applicability, plant’s capacity,
pumps capacities, required casting rate etc.

2 Real Life Ready-Mix Concrete Engineering Problem

This paper analyzes a real daily engineering application to supply different large concrete
pouring at the same time from different batching locations and to reduce operation cost at both
plant and site.

The problem is summarized as follow: Three operational batching plants at different locations
belonging to the same ready-mix concrete company were available for supply (Fig. 1, black
stars). The locations of the batching stations were: (a) Jebel Ali (J) with 3 batching plants at 220
m3/hr, (b) Technopark (T) with 2 batching plants at 160 m3/hr, and (c) Dubai Industrial City (DIC)
with 2 batching plants at 160 m3/hr.
 Page 3 of 6

Fig. 1. Batching plants locations (black stars) and concrete pouring location (yellow star).

In this real industry problem, trucks are considered allocated between all stations, a situation
that represents actual industry behavior in distribution of the trucks within the same city when
the batching stations are near to each other or in small city. Therefore, trucks will be reallocated
to comply with the optimization solution considering that the total trucks capacity rate is
matching or exceeding production rate of the plants. However, the number of the allocated
trucks can be added as trucks total capacity per hour, which will introduce an additional
constraint to the problem in case that each location has limited allocated number of trucks.

Simultaneous pouring must occur at a location (Fig. 1, yellow star) according to the following
details:
Table 1. Simultaneous pouring
Maximum Allowed Minimum
3
Structure to be Volume (m ) Casting Duration (hrs) Casting Rate
casted (hrs/m3)
Raft (R) 3500 14 250
Slab (S) 450 4 150

. Operation costs of supply options for cost optimization are as follows:

 Page 4 of 6

Decision Variables Operation

for Supply Cost (AED/m3)
JR 41
JS 47
TR 36
TS 39
DR 46
DS 43
The Objective Function was given by:

F = 41 JR + 47 JS + 36 TR + 39 TS + 46 DR + 43 DS (1)
The cost optimization with the simplex method has the form of:

Metro Project Supply (Decision Variables) Jebel Ali Technopark DIC Minimum rate (m3/hr)
Raft JR TR DR 250
Slab JS TS DS 150
Maximum Available rate (m3/hr) 220 160 160
With the constraints cast in the form:

Constraint JR JS TR TS DR DS
A 1 1 ≤ 220
B 1 1 ≤ 160
C 1 1 ≤ 160
D 1 1 1 ≥ 250
E 1 1 1 ≥ 150
Yielding the following table:

Constraint JR JS TR TS DR DS
A 1 1 ≤ 220
B 1 1 ≤ 160
C 1 1 ≤ 160
D -1 -1 -1 ≤ -250
E -1 -1 -1 ≤ -150
 Page 5 of 6

Upon coding the objective function and the constraints in Matlab as:
f=[41 47 36 39 46 43]
A=[1 1 0 0 0 0; 0 0 1 1 0 0; 0 0 0 0 1 1; -1 0 -1 0 -1 0;
0 -1 0 -1 0 -1]
b=[220 160 160 -250 -150]
Aeq=[]
beq=[]
lb=[0 0 0 0 0 0]
ub=[]
[X,Z]= linprog(f,A,b,Aeq,beq,lb,ub)
The solution that yielded the minimum operating cost of pouring at 15,900 AED was found to be:

Decision Variables Operation

m3/hr
for Supply Cost (AED/m3)
JR 41 90
JS 47 0
TR 36 160
TS 39 0
DR 46 0
DS 43 150

4 Summary and Conclusions

Linear Programming is effective in solving ready-mix concrete industry cost minimization

problems with different variables and several constraints. The current article illustrated the use
of this method as a tool to optimize concrete deliveries from different batching locations to meet
structural casting rates at an optimum cost possible. The solution satisfied all constrains and
provided the lowest possible cost without compromising customer satisfaction and structural
requirements on site.

5 References
1. Albayrak, G., & Albayrak, U. (2016, October). Investigation of Ready Mixed Concrete
Transportation Problem Using Linear Programming and Genetic Algorithm. Civil Engineering
Journal, 2(10).
2- Ferguson, T. S. (2018). Linear Programming, A Concise Introduction. UCLA College
Mathematics. Available at: https://www.math.ucla.edu/~tom/LP.pdf (Accessed January 25,
2018).
3- Gómez, C.H., and Moon, J. (2018). Application of linear programming methods to determine
the best location of concrete dispatch plants. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois
Available at: https://faculty.math.illinois.edu/~ayong/student_projects/Gomez.Moon.pdf
(Accessed January 17, 2018)
 Page 6 of 6

4- Haddad, A. M. (2016). Planning Production of Concrete Products Using Linear Programming:

A Case of Small Tile Cement Tile Factory. Oxford Journal: An International Journal of
Business & Economics, 33-43.
5- Kozniewski, E., & Orlowski, Z. (2010). Extended linear programming in models of location of
concrete mix production plants. Journal of Civil Engineering and Management, 289-297.
6- Maghrebi, M., & Sammut, C. (2015). Column Generation Based Approach for Solving Large-
Scale Ready Mixed Concrete Delivery Dispatching Problems. Computer-Aided Civil and
Infrastructure Engineering.
7- Narayanan, P. K., Rey, D., & Maghrebi, M. (2015, October). Using Lagrangian Relaxation to
Solve Ready Mixed Concrete Dispatching Problems. Journal of the Transportation Research
Board.

View publication stats