A multiperiod drayage problem with customer-dependent service periods

Abstract

We investigate a routing problem arising in the domain of drayage operations. to determine mimimum-cost vehicle routes in several periods. We adapt a set-covering model, which is solved either with all feasible routes by an off-the-shelf MIP solver, or by and a Price-and-Branch algorithm in which the pricing problem is a formulated as a collection of shortest path problems in tailor-made auxiliary acyclic networks. We propose a new arc-flow formulation based on the previous auxiliary networks and show that solving it by a MIP solver is usually preferable. Finally, we characterize how possible changes in flexibility levels affect routing costs