An exact hybrid method for the vehicle routing problem with time windows and multiple deliverymen

The vehicle routing problem with time windows and multiple deliverymen (VRPTWMD) is a variant of the vehicle routing problem with time windows in which service times at customers depend on the number of deliverymen assigned to the route that serves them. Hence, in addition to the usual routing and scheduling decisions, the crew size for … Read more

Scalable Robust and Adaptive Inventory Routing

We consider the finite horizon inventory routing problem with uncertain demand, where a supplier must deliver a particular commodity to its customers periodically, such that even under uncertain demand the customers do not stock out, e.g. supplying residential heating oil to customers. Current techniques that solve this problem with stochastic demand, robust or adaptive optimization … Read more

Mixed-integer Programming Based Approaches for the Movement Planner Problem: Model, Heuristics and Decomposition

This is the first prize winning report for the 2012 INFORMS Railway Application Section Problem Solving Competition (https://www.informs.org/Community/RAS/Problem-Solving-Competition/2012-RAS-Problem-Solving-Competition). ArticleDownload View PDF

Complexity of Routing Problems with Release Dates and Deadlines

The desire of companies to offer same-day delivery leads to interesting new routing problems. We study the complexity of a setting in which a delivery to a customer is guaranteed to take place within a pre-specified time after the customer places the order. Thus, an order has a release date (when the order is placed) … Read more

Exact Algorithms for the Chance-Constrained Vehicle Routing Problem

We study the chance-constrained vehicle routing problem (CCVRP), a version of the vehicle routing problem (VRP) with stochastic demands, where a limit is imposed on the probability that each vehicle’s capacity is exceeded. A distinguishing feature of our proposed methodologies is that they allow correlation between random demands, whereas nearly all existing exact methods for … Read more

A joint routing and speed optimization problem

Fuel cost contributes to a significant portion of operating cost in cargo transportation. Though classic routing models usually treat fuel cost as input data, fuel consumption heavily depends on the travel speed, which has led to the study of optimizing speeds over a given fixed route. In this paper, we propose a joint routing and … Read more

City Logistics: Challenges and Opportunities

Today, around 54% of the world’s population lives in urban areas. By 2050, this share is expected to go up significantly. As a result, city logistics, which focuses on the efficient and effective transportation of goods in urban areas while taking into account the negative effects on congestion, safety, and environment, is critical to ensuring … Read more

The stochastic vehicle routing problem, a literature review, part I: models

Building on the work of Gendreau, Laporte, and Seguin (1996), we review the past 20 years of scientific literature on stochastic vehicle routing problems (SVRP). The numerous variants of the problem that have been studied in the literature are described and categorized. Also a thorough review of solution methods applied to the SVRP is included … Read more

The Vehicle Routing Problem with Occasional Drivers

We consider a setting in which a company not only has a fleet of capacitated vehicles and drivers available to make deliveries, but may also use the services of occasional drivers who are willing to make a single delivery using their own vehicle in return for a small compensation if the delivery location is not … Read more

A branch-price-and-cut algorithm for the vehicle routing problem with time windows and multiple deliverymen

We address a variant of the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) that includes the decision of how many deliverymen should be assigned to each vehicle. In this variant, the service time at each customer depends on the size of the respective demand and on the number of deliverymen assigned to visit this customer. … Read more