Geographic information systems: Proposal for the relocation of a central distribution point through the centroid method

The basic education system of public schools in Mexico performs the delivery of Free Text Books at the beginning of each school-cycle. In the Northern zone of the Chihuahua state, there are 1159 schools demanding approximately 1,850,000 books to be distributed to the almost 300,000 students who assist in that region. The distribution process for the basic education books starts with the books reception in a warehouse found in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico for its later distribution to each school at the beginning of the school-cycle, on the August of each year. The current location of the warehouse causes the distribution times and costs to be extremely high. This research work presents a warehouse relocation proposal for the delivery of free textbooks that allows a reduction in the delivery costs and distribution times to the 1159 schools. Using a Geographic Information System and the Centroid Method, it was possible to find an optimal warehouse location that, in this case, will be a Central Distribution. The findings show that the proposed optimal location point saves 2,745 kilometers in transportation compared with the current location and because this process takes place throughout Mexico and therefore the recommendations provided in this paper could substantially reduce the time and cost of the FTB delivery in the 32 states of the Mexican Republic if they choose to implement them.