Abstract—A pilot project was carried out in 2007 by the senior students of Cyprus International University, aiming to minimize the total cost of waste collection in Northern Cyprus. Many developed and developing countries have cut their transportation costs – which lies between 30-40% – down at a rate of 40% percent, by implementing network models for their route assignments. Accordingly, a network model was implemented at Göçmenköy district, to optimize and standardize waste collection works. The work environment of the employees were also redesigned to provide maximum ergonomy and to increase productivity, efficiency and safety. Following the collection of the required data including waste densities, lengths of roads and population, a model was constructed to allocate the optimal route assignment for the waste collection trucks at Göçmenköy district. Keywords—Minimization, waste collection, operations cost, transportation, ergonomy, productivity. I. INTRODUCTION ASTE collection and transport is an operation necessary to the well being of any country. The cost of this operation cannot be reduced at the expense of low efficiency or minimal service, on the contrary, this type of service should always be made more efficient. Accordingly, the study aimed to make the operations more reliable and efficient and also reduce cost through the conventional means of work study, ergonomics and operations research. Prior to the start of the study, the problems with waste collection were as follows: 1 The routes that were presently being used by the waste collection vehicles were random; this caused a low level of service because of missed collection points and streets. 2 The productivity of the waste workers was very low. 3 The collection workers faced high health risks and proper safety measures were not taken to prevent them. 4 The general city population faced health risks due to uncollected waste. 5 The waste collection vehicles could not be monitored. 6 The shifts of the workers were not fixed which lead to working extra hours with a higher cost. 7 Because of the inefficient waste collection system the tourism inflow and the health of the general student Authors are with Department of Industrial Engineering, Cyprus International University, Lefkosa, Cyprus, TRNC. population living on the island was threatened. The need for such a study is extremely important for Northern Cyprus, whose major sources of income are students and tourists. Both of them need a clean and healthy environment. Therefore, these sources of income should be nurtured by providing them with what they need. The present drop in the number of tourists and students coming to the island can be in part blamed on the low level of services provided by the municipality. Improving and reducing the costs will help the municipality to assign resources and manpower to other projects. II. LITERATURE SURVEY Finding the optimal route for a fleet of vehicles has been the topic of many studies. Optimizing vehicle routes has been classified as Vehicle Routing Problems by Dantzig and Ramser [1], and is basically a variant of the Travelling Salesman Problem with particular constraints. Vehicle Routing Problems are divided into categories which deal with specific constraints such capacity (CVRP), time windows (VRPTW), periods (PVRP) etc. Teemu Nuortio, Jari Kyto¨joki, Harri Niska, Olli Braysy [2], on the other hand aimed to maximize the efficiency of waste collection vehicle routes for two regions in Eastern Finland. The study provided routes with time windows, hence using the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows or VRPTW (Braysy and Gendreau 2005 a,b). The collection routes were based on the location of waste containers, the vehicles were routed in respect with these co-ordinates. But also, the amount and volume of the waste collected always depended on the density of the population, income level, and Lifestyle, therefore this problem in part becomes a Stochastic Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows and a limited number of vehicles (SPVRPTW). The problem was solved by Guided Variable Neighborhood Thresholding (GVNT) metaheuristic of Kytojoki, Nuorto and Braysy (2004). Average savings due to the implementation of this study was about 2500 km (in Kuopio area), and on average the routes were improved by nearly 46%. Sandra Cointreau [3] highlights that the total collection costs require from about 0.5% to 2.5% of the total per capita income (as GDP), services only cover from about 30% to 70% of the total urban population and the service is infrequent. Route type, vehicle type, waste type etc should be considered in order to maximize productivity. Results highlight that 5 A Pilot Study for the Optimization of Routes for Waste Collection Vehicles for the Göçmenköy District of Lefko a Nergiz Fırıncı, Aysun Çelik, Ertan Akün, and Md. Atif Khan W World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Vol:3, No:1, 2009 119 International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 3(1) 2009 ISNI:0000000091950263 Open Science Index, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Vol:3, No:1, 2009 publications.waset.org/12131/pdf