A crucial practical issue encountered in logistics management is the circulation of final products from depots to end-user customers. When routing and scheduling systems are improved, they will not only improve customer satisfaction but also increase the capacity to serve a large number of customers minimizing time. On the assumption that there is only one depot, the key issue of distribution is generally identified and formulated as VRP standing for Vehicle Routing Problem. In case, a company having more than one depot, the suggested VRP is most unlikely to work out. In view of resolving this limitation and proposing alternatives, VRP with multiple depots and multi-depot MDVRP have been a focus of this paper. Carrying out a comprehensive analytical literature survey of past ten years on cost-effective Multi-Depot Vehicle Routing is the main aim of this research. Therefore, the current status of the MDVRP along with its future developments is reviewed at length in the paper.

The government of Sri Lanka has established several economic centres in the provincesbased on the budget proposal which was released in the year 1998. The Dambulla economic centre was the first such centre which was established on the 1st of April 1999. Since then, a number of economic centres were established throughout the island. However, Dambulla main hub continues to be the central warehouse where the vegetables are stored in the island. This paper deals with vehicle scheduling related to transportation and it investigates a method whereby a solution can be arrived, using linear programming (LP). Marketing Department Logistics (MDL), Ltd. needs to distribute vegetables and fruits to different provinces. Its main hub is situated near the Dambulla vegetable and fruit market and minor hubs are situated in different provinces in Sri Lanka. The main objective of this research is building a cost minimized model which creates a suitable method for delivering vegetables and fruits from the Dambulla major hub through its minor hubs to outlets in the provinces. Hence, in order to optimize the cost of outbound distribution, a mathematical model has been developed by using Integer Linear Programmingand by using industrial based reliable sources to collect data. Software assistance was obtained using the LINGO 06 optimizer, Java, MS Access and MS Excel tools to solve this mathematical model. This study is based on the Dambulla economic centre. This is an initial step to bring a correct protocol to arrange a transport model in order to distribute the vegetables and fruits from this centre in a cost-effective manner. According to this study, all districts in Sri Lanka could be divided into four clusters. At the beginning of this research, we assumed that each district contains two warehouses and three vendors. This model paves the way to create a larger model for solving any type of transportation planning problem.

Despite bringing enormous profit to the company as well as the development of the country, freight forwarding is still considered as a developing field in Sri Lanka. Freight forwarders usually work with agents, forwarders, small or medium size manufacturers, therefore, having a close customer relationship is a vital role which could sustain the freight forwarding industry competitive.This study investigates the determinants of customer satisfaction in freight forwarding companies in Sri Lanka. Primary data was collected by means of an online questionnaire from freight forwarders in the Western province of Sri Lanka and overall 258 valid questionnaires were used for the analysis. Besides, an auxiliary analysis was carried out using 19 potential influential factors which derived eight factors to determine the overall customer satisfaction which titled as reliability, responsiveness, communication and documentation accuracy, assurance, empathy, branding, technology, efficiency and trust. Hence in a situation where the growth rate for the logistics industry is drastically increasing, this thesis is important for further improvement of customer relationship in freight forwarding companies in Sri Lanka.

This study has focused to identify the factors effects to Hambantota district public transportation users when selecting travel route. Principally the travel experience on Southern expressway (E01) and normal route Colombo-Hambantota (A02) journeys are considered in this study. It provides a framework for understanding the passenger satisfaction levels and then the requirements while travelling from Southern province to Western province by using expressway and normal route. An exploratory factor analysis was carried out using 09 independent variables for both expressway and normal route journey. It was concluded with 03 factors for route journey: (Nature of Travel, Passenger requirement and Convenience of travel) and 04 factors: (Passenger requirement, Convenience of Travel, Operational Factors and Passenger Expectation) for the expressway journey, which determined the perception of commuters. Amongst, the nature of travel and the passenger requirements were having a correlation for the passenger satisfaction of normal route journey, besides, operational factors having a correlation towards the journey satisfaction

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