Using Simulated Annealing to Solve the Daily Drayage Problem with Hard Time Windows

Drayage is the stage of the intermodal transport that deals with transport of freight on trucks among the intermodal terminal, and customers and suppliers that are located in its hinterland. This work proposes an algorithm based on simulated annealing heuristics to solve the operations of drayage. This algorithm has been used to solve battery problems, demonstrating the validity and suitability of its results, which were compared with exact method

Extracting Expert Knowledge and Building Strategic Decision in International Logistics and Kaohsiung Area

Evaluating the development and investment direction of complex transportation system for Kaohsiung international logistics is very important to Taiwan. According to the effect of internal and external variables factors, it is necessary to inspect the Kaohsiung metropolitan area epistemic development plan and trend of domestic industry develop international logistics. In order to achieve the benefits of developing logistics integration; we set the Kaohsiung harbour and airport as the core of this study. Exploring that how to strengthen the international logistics function and develop the strategy to improve the economic environment of Kaohsiung area. Consequently, this study is to extract critical expert knowledge and to build strategic decision to improve the economic environment of Kaohsiung area and international logistics

Heurística de asignación en tiempo real de vehículos a tareas de acarreo intermodal

[ESP] El transporte por carretera es el principal modo de envío de mercancías en el ámbito terrestre. Observando los últimos datos proporcionados por el Instituto Nacional de Estadística, el transporte interregional de mercancías en el año 2008 fue de 119.559 Tn·Km en el caso del transporte por carretera y de tan sólo 10.287 Tn·Km en el caso del transporte ferroviario. Esta contundente preferencia del mercado hacia la carretera se debe principalmente a una serie de ventajas que esta presenta para el movimiento de bienes dentro de España; entre ellas cabe destacar una gran flexibilidad de operación, la posibilidad de comenzar un envío desde cualquier lugar y en cualquier momento. Sin embargo, el aumento de la congestión en las principales vías españolas y la creciente preocupación por la sostenibilidad han hecho a los diferentes gobiernos buscar modos alternativos de transporte. Desde las diferentes administraciones, se está señalando al transporte intermodal como una alternativa. La intermodalidad, definida por la Comisión Europea como una característica de un sistema de transportes en virtud de la cual se utilizan de forma integrada al menos dos modos de transporte diferentes para completar una cadena de transporte puerta a puerta, permite mediante un planteamiento global una utilización más racional de la capacidad de transporte disponible.Esta investigación fue financiada por el programa Era-Star Regions y la Consejería de Innovación y Ciencia de Andalucía, SR-0197/2008 (Proyecto Galileo-Drayage)

A satellite navigation system to improve the management of intermodal drayage

The intermodal transport chain can become more efficient by means of a good organization of the drayage movements. Drayage in intermodal container terminals involves the pick up or delivery of containers at customer locations, and the main objective is normally the assignment of transportation tasks to the different vehicles, often with the presence of time windows. The literature shows some works on centralised drayage management, but most of them consider the problem only from a static and deterministic perspective, whereas the work we present here incorporates the knowledge of the real-time position of the vehicles, which permanently enables the planner to reassign tasks in case the problem conditions change. This exact knowledge of position of the vehicles is possible thanks to a geographic positioning system by satellite (GPS, Galileo, Glonass), and the results show that this additional data can be used to dynamically improve the solution

An efficient mixed integer programming model for pairing containers in inland transportation based on the assignment of orders

The inland transportation takes a significant portion of the total cost that arises from intermodal transportation. In addition, there are many parties (shipping lines, haulage companies, customers) who share this operation as well as many restrictions that increase the complexity of this problem and make it NP-hard. Therefore, it is important to create an efficient strategy to manage this process in a way to ensure all parties are satisfied. This paper investigates the pairing of containers/orders in drayage transportation from the perspective of delivering paired containers on 40-ft truck and/or individual containers on 20-ft truck, between a single port and a list of customer locations. An assignment mixed integer linear programming model is formulated, which solves the problem of how to combine orders in delivery to save the total transportation cost when orders with both single and multiple destinations exist. In opposition to the traditional models relying on the vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pickups and deliveries and time windows formulation, this model falls into the assignment problem category which is more efficient to solve on large size instances. Another merit for the proposed model is that it can be implemented on different variants of the container drayage problem: import only, import–inland and import–inland–export. Results show that in all cases the pairing of containers yields less cost compared to the individual delivery and decreases empty tours. The proposed model can be solved to optimality efficiently (within half hour) for over 300 orders

Algebraic structural analysis of a vehicle routing problem of heterogeneous trucks. Identification of the properties allowing an exact approach.

Although integer linear programming problems are typically difficult to solve, there exist some easier problems, where the linear programming relaxation is integer. This thesis sheds light on a drayage problem which is supposed to have this nice feature, after extensive computational experiments. This thesis aims to provide a theoretical understanding of these results by the analysis of the algebraic structures of the mathematical formulation. Three reformulations are presented to prove if the constraint matrix is totally unimodular. We will show which experimental conditions are necessary and sufficient (or only sufficient or only necessary) for total unimodularity

Integrated Intermodal Logistics Network Design

Intermodal freight transportation uses at least two different transportation modes (e.g., truck, rail, ship, air) to move freight loads that are in the same transportation unit (e.g., a shipping container) from origin to destination without handling the goods themselves. The increasing shift to intermodal transportation and the growth of freight transportation demand have resulted in a higher demand for intermodal freight transportation that has been projected to grow even faster in the next few decades. Satisfying this emerging demand will require enhancing the capacity of current intermodal facilities or even the construction of new intermodal facilities. This research addresses the intermodal logistics network design problem which is one of the key strategic planning decisions related to intermodal transportation. To obtain the maximum performance of the intermodal logistics network, two relevant decisions corresponding to the route and mode selection for freight loads were integrated with the facility location problem within the integrated intermodal logistics network design (IILND) problem. To address the IILND problem, two mathematical formulations were developed. One considered making decisions about arcs of the network while the other considered making decisions about routes for origin-destination flows in the network. The arc-based formulation modeled the effect of consolidating freight loads at intermodal terminals on the transportation cost by a stepwise function that relates the per container transportation cost to the amount of flow between two nodes. A heuristic approach that combines a genetic algorithm and the shortest path algorithm was developed to efficiently obtain high quality solutions for the arc-based formulation. Unlike the arc-based formulation, the route-based formulation modeled the effect of consolidating different loads at intermodal terminals on the transportation cost and time using constant discount and delay factors, respectively. Moreover, a composite variable formulation was used for the route-based formulation to incorporate route feasibility constraints within the definition of the composites and avoid explicitly adding them to the model. These modifications reduced the number of variables and constraints significantly when compared to the arc-based formulation. Two solution approaches were developed to find optimal solutions for the route-based formulation, namely a decomposition-based search algorithm and an accelerated Bender’s decomposition method. Several sets of computational experiments were completed to evaluate the performance of the proposed mathematical formulations and solutions approaches. Finally, several general insights about the effects of design parameters on solution characteristics were obtained from the computational experiments and directions for future research were identified

Intermodal transportation of hazardous materials with supplier selection : application in Turkey

Ankara : The Department of Industrial Engineering and the Graduate School of Engineering and Science of Bilkent University, 2011.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2011.Includes bibliographical references leaves 81-84.Fuel transportation constitutes a significant portion of hazardous materials transportation for decades. Fuel companies generally prefer highway transportation whereas railway transportation is also a potential alternative due to its advantages both from cost- and risk perspectives. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the potential benefits of using railways in conjunction to highways for fuel transportation in Turkey. In this thesis, we first investigate a quantitative risk model that could be used to assess the risk of railway transportation. Then, a mathematical model is developed which aims to answer the following three questions: What should be the routes of fuel products transported from suppliers to demand points and which transportation mode(s) should be used on these routes?, Where to open transfer units?, and Which suppliers should satisfy which demand points with what capacity?. The model has two possibly conflicting objectives of minimizing the total transportation risk and minimizing the total transportation cost. The proposed models are tested over Turkish network for which all required realistic data are collected.Elaldı, PelinM.S