We study tactical models for the design of same-day delivery (SDD) systems. Same-day fulfillment in e-commerce has seen substantial growth in recent years, and the underlying management of such services is complex. While the literature includes operational models to study SDD, they tend to be detailed, complex, and computationally difficult to solve, and thus may … Read more
This paper presents conditions for which the linear relaxation for the train scheduling problem is integer-optimal. These conditions are then used to identify how to partition a general problem’s feasible region into integer-optimal polytopes. Such an approach yields an extended formulation that contains far fewer binary variables. Our computational experiments show that this approach results … Read more
In this paper, we formally define and model the Fuel Replenishment Problem (FRP). The FRP is a multi-compartment, multi-trip, split-delivery VRP in which tanker trucks transport different types of petrol, separated over multiple vehicle compartments, from an oil depot to petrol stations. Large customer demands often necessitate multiple deliveries. Throughout a single working day, a … Read more
Most state-of-the-art algorithms for the Vehicle Routing Problem, such as Branch-and- Price algorithms or meta heuristics, rely on a fast feasibility test for a given route. We devise the fi rst approach to approximately check feasibility in the Stochastic Vehicle Routing Problem with time windows, where travel times are correlated and depend on the time of … Read more
In this work we study binary two-stage robust optimization problems with objective uncertainty. The concept of two-stage robustness is tailored for problems under uncertainty which have two different kinds of decision variables, first-stage decisions which have to be made here-and-now and second-stage decisions which can be determined each time after an uncertain scenario occured. We … Read more
We address a stochastic variant of the Vehicle Routing Problem with Roaming Delivery Locations. In this model, direct-to-consumer deliveries can be made in the trunk of the customer’s car, while the vehicle is parked at a location along the customer’s itinerary. The stochasticity arises from the uncertainty in travel times and the problem is formulated … Read more
We study a variant of the multi-period vehicle routing problem, in which a service provider offers a discount to customer in exchange for delivery flexibility. We establish theoretical properties and empirical insights regarding the intricate and complex relation between the benefit from additional delivery flexibility, the discounts offered to customers to gain additional delivery flexibility, … Read more
A tourism company that offers fly-in safaris is faced with the challenge to route and schedule its fleet of airplanes in an optimal way. Over the course of a given time horizon several groups of tourists have to be picked up at airports and flown to their destinations within a certain time-window. Furthermore the number … Read more
Less-than-truckload carriers rely on the consolidation of freight from multiple shippers to achieve economies of scale. Collected freight is routed through a number of transfer terminals at each of which shipments are grouped together for the next leg of their journeys. We study the service network design problem confronted by these carriers. This problem includes … Read more
Finding a shortest path in a network is an iconic optimization problem. We focus on settings in which the travel time on an arc in the network depends on the time at which traversal of the arc begins. In such settings, reaching the sink as early as possible is not the only objective of interest. … Read more