scholarly journals Fuzzy Programming Approaches for Modeling a Customer-Centred Freight Routing Problem in the Road-Rail Intermodal Hub-and-Spoke Network with Fuzzy Soft Time Windows and Multiple Sources of Time Uncertainty

Mathematics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sun ◽  
Li

In this study, we systematically investigate a road-rail intermodal routing problem the optimization of which is oriented on the customer demands on transportation economy, timeliness and reliability. The road-rail intermodal transportation system is modelled as a hub-and-spoke network that contains time-flexible container truck services and scheduled container train services. The transportation timeliness is optimized by using fuzzy soft time windows associated with the service level of the transportation. Reliability is enhanced by considering multiple sources of time uncertainty, including road travel time and loading/unloading time. Such uncertainty is modelled by using fuzzy set theory. Triangular fuzzy numbers are adopted to represent the uncertain time. Under the above consideration, we first establish a fuzzy mixed integer nonlinear programming model with a weighted objective that includes minimizing the costs and maximizing the service level for accomplishing transportation orders. Then we use the fuzzy expected value model and fuzzy chance-constrained programming separately to realize the defuzzification of the fuzzy objective and use fuzzy chance-constrained programming to deal with the fuzzy constraint. After defuzzification and linearization, an equivalent mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model is generated to enable the problem to be solved by mathematical programming software. Finally, a numerical case modified from our previous study is presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed fuzzy programming approaches. Sensitivity analysis and fuzzy simulation are comprehensively utilized to discuss the effects of the fuzzy soft time windows and time uncertainty on the routing optimization and help decision makers to better design a crisp transportation plan that can effectively make tradeoffs among economy, timeliness and reliability.

Symmetry ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Sun ◽  
Xia Liang ◽  
Xinya Li ◽  
Chen Zhang

Demand uncertainty is an important issue that influences the strategic, tactical, and operational-level decision making in the transportation/logistics/supply chain planning. In this study, we explore the effect of demand uncertainty on the operational-level freight routing problem in the capacitated multimodal transportation network that consists of schedule-based rail transportation and time-flexible road transportation. Considering the imprecise characteristic of the demand, we adopt fuzzy set theory to model its uncertainty and use trapezoidal fuzzy numbers to represent the fuzzy demands. We set multiple transportation orders as the optimization object and employ soft time windows to reflect the customer requirement on on-time transportation. Under the above situation, we establish a fuzzy mixed integer nonlinear programming (FMINLP) model to formulate the capacitated road–rail multimodal routing problem with demand uncertainty and time windows. We first use the fuzzy expected value model and credibility measure based fuzzy chance-constrained programming to realize the defuzziness of the model and then adopt linearization technique to reformulate the crisp model to finally generate an equivalent mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model that can be solved by standard mathematical programming software. Finally, a numerical case is presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method. Sensitivity analysis and fuzzy simulation are combined to quantify the effect of demand uncertainty on the routing problem and also reveal some helpful insights and managerial implications.


Author(s):  
András Éles ◽  
István Heckl ◽  
Heriberto Cabezas

AbstractA mathematical model is introduced to solve a mobile workforce management problem. In such a problem there are a number of tasks to be executed at different locations by various teams. For example, when an electricity utility company has to deal with planned system upgrades and damages caused by storms. The aim is to determine the schedule of the teams in such a way that the overall cost is minimal. The mobile workforce management problem involves scheduling. The following questions should be answered: when to perform a task, how to route vehicles—the vehicle routing problem—and the order the sites should be visited and by which teams. These problems are already complex in themselves. This paper proposes an integrated mathematical programming model formulation, which, by the assignment of its binary variables, can be easily included in heuristic algorithmic frameworks. In the problem specification, a wide range of parameters can be set. This includes absolute and expected time windows for tasks, packing and unpacking in case of team movement, resource utilization, relations between tasks such as precedence, mutual exclusion or parallel execution, and team-dependent travelling and execution times and costs. To make the model able to solve larger problems, an algorithmic framework is also implemented which can be used to find heuristic solutions in acceptable time. This latter solution method can be used as an alternative. Computational performance is examined through a series of test cases in which the most important factors are scaled.


OR Spectrum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Tilk ◽  
Katharina Olkis ◽  
Stefan Irnich

AbstractThe ongoing rise in e-commerce comes along with an increasing number of first-time delivery failures due to the absence of the customer at the delivery location. Failed deliveries result in rework which in turn has a large impact on the carriers’ delivery cost. In the classical vehicle routing problem (VRP) with time windows, each customer request has only one location and one time window describing where and when shipments need to be delivered. In contrast, we introduce and analyze the vehicle routing problem with delivery options (VRPDO), in which some requests can be shipped to alternative locations with possibly different time windows. Furthermore, customers may prefer some delivery options. The carrier must then select, for each request, one delivery option such that the carriers’ overall cost is minimized and a given service level regarding customer preferences is achieved. Moreover, when delivery options share a common location, e.g., a locker, capacities must be respected when assigning shipments. To solve the VRPDO exactly, we present a new branch-price-and-cut algorithm. The associated pricing subproblem is a shortest-path problem with resource constraints that we solve with a bidirectional labeling algorithm on an auxiliary network. We focus on the comparison of two alternative modeling approaches for the auxiliary network and present optimal solutions for instances with up to 100 delivery options. Moreover, we provide 17 new optimal solutions for the benchmark set for the VRP with roaming delivery locations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Chenghua Shi ◽  
Tonglei Li ◽  
Yu Bai ◽  
Fei Zhao

We present the vehicle routing problem with potential demands and time windows (VRP-PDTW), which is a variation of the classical VRP. A homogenous fleet of vehicles originated in a central depot serves customers with soft time windows and deliveries from/to their locations, and split delivery is considered. Also, besides the initial demand in the order contract, the potential demand caused by conformity consuming behavior is also integrated and modeled in our problem. The objective of minimizing the cost traveled by the vehicles and penalized cost due to violating time windows is then constructed. We propose a heuristics-based parthenogenetic algorithm (HPGA) for successfully solving optimal solutions to the problem, in which heuristics is introduced to generate the initial solution. Computational experiments are reported for instances and the proposed algorithm is compared with genetic algorithm (GA) and heuristics-based genetic algorithm (HGA) from the literature. The comparison results show that our algorithm is quite competitive by considering the quality of solutions and computation time.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-234
Author(s):  
Ananda Noor Sholichah ◽  
Y Yuniaristanto ◽  
I Wayan Suletra

Location and routing are the main critical problems investigated in a logistic. Location-Routing Problem (LRP) involves determining the location of facilities and vehicle routes to supply customer's demands. Determination of depots as distribution centers is one of the problems in LRP.  In LRP, carbon emissions need to be considered because these problems cause global warming and climate change. In this paper, a new mathematical model for LRP considering CO2 emissions minimization is proposed. This study developed a new  Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP)  model for LRP with time windows and considered the environmental impacts.  Finally, a case study was conducted in the province of Central Java, Indonesia. In this case study, there are three depot candidates. The study results indicated that using this method in existing conditions and constraints provides a more optimal solution than the company's actual route. A sensitivity analysis was also carried out in this case study.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document