Title
A Model and Algorithm for the Courier Delivery Problem with Uncertainty
Abstract
We consider the courier delivery problem (CDP), a variant of the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) in which customers appear probabilistically and their service times are uncertain. We use scenario-based stochastic programming with recourse to model the uncertainty in customers and robust optimization for the uncertainty in service times. Our proposed model generates a master plan and daily schedules by maximizing the coverage of customers and the similarity of routes in each scenario, while minimizing the total time spent by the couriers and the total earliness and lateness penalty. To solve large-scale problem instances, we develop an insertion-based solution heuristic, called master and daily scheduler (MADS), and a tabu search improvement procedure. The computational results show that our heuristic improves the similarity of routes and the lateness penalty at the expense of increased total time spent when compared to a solution of independently scheduling each day. Our experimental results also show improvements over current industry practice on two real-world data sets.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1287/trsc.1090.0303
Transportation Science
Keywords
Field
DocType
daily schedule,large-scale problem instance,daily scheduler,total earliness,time windows,courier delivery,service time,total time,increased total time,courier delivery problem,lateness penalty,stochastic optimization,insertion,optimization,robust optimization,algorithms,routing,stochastic programming,tabu search,uncertainty,vehicle routing
Mathematical optimization,Vehicle routing problem,Stochastic optimization,Heuristic,Robust optimization,Scheduling (computing),Schedule,Stochastic programming,Tabu search,Operations management,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
44
2
0041-1655
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
33
0.91
17
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ilgaz Sungur1672.63
Yingtao Ren2422.41
Fernando Ordóòez3571.90
Maged Dessouky447939.53
Hongsheng Zhong5622.72