Vehicle Routing under Consideration of Transhipment in Horizontal Coalitions of Freight Carriers

AbstractIn order to reduce operational costs related to transportation activities in road haulage, small and medium-sized freight carriers can establish horizontal coalitions and share their resources. Through exchange of customer requests with other members within the coalition, carriers can improve the operational efficiency of their transportation processes. In this paper, transhipment is integrated into the conventional pickup and delivery problem in the collaborative context. Specifically, vehicles involved in transferring the same request are synchronized at the transhipment points. A mixed-integer programming model is proposed for this problem. Based on this model the benefits of transhipment are analysed. Computational results show considerable cost-savings enabled by transhipment in the operational planning of carrier coalitions

Semantic transportation planning for food products supply chain ecosystem within difficult geographic zones

Purpose – In difficult geographical zones (mountain, intra-cities areas, etc.), many shippers, from small and medium enterprises to individuals, may demand delivery of different food products ( fresh, refrigerated, frozen, etc.) in small quantities. On the other side, carrier companies wish to use their vehicles optimally. Taking into account the perishability constraints (short-shelflife, temperature limits, etc.) of the transported food products and environmentalconstraints (pollution, carbon impact) while consolidatingmultiple kinds of food products to use vehicles optimally is not achieved by current transportation planning solutions. The purpose of this paper is to present an interoperable solution of a marketplace, formed by shippers and carriers, dedicated to the schedule of food transport orders. Design/methodology/approach – This transportation planning system named Interoperable-Pathfinder, Order, Vehicle, Environment and Supervisor (I-POVES) is an interoperable multi-agent system, based on the SCEP (supervisor, customer, environment and producer) model (Archimede and Coudert, 2001). Ontologies are developed to create the planning marketplace comprising demands and offers from different sources (multiple shippers and carriers). Findings – A hierarchy ontology for food products. A transporter system ontology. A global ontology that contains all shared concepts used by local ontologies of both shippers and carriers. I-POVES an interoperable model, which facilitates collaboration between carriers and their shippers through its active agents. Practical implications – I-POVES is tested on a case study from the TECCAS Poctefa project, comprising transport and food companies from both sides of the Pyrenees (France and Spain). Originality/value – There has been much work in the literature on the delivery of products, but very few on the delivery of food products. Work related to delivery of food products focuses mostly on timely delivery for avoiding its wastage. In this paper, constraints related to food products and to environment (pollution and carbon impact) of transport resources are taken into account while planning the delivery

Horizontal collaboration in freight transport: concepts, benefits and environmental challenges

[EN] Since its appearance in the 1990s, horizontal collaboration (HC) practices have revealed themselves as catalyzers for optimizing the distribution of goods in freight transport logistics. After introducing the main concepts related to HC, this paper offers a literature review on the topic and provides a classification of best practices in HC. Then, the paper analyses the main benefits and optimization challenges associated with the use of HC at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. Emerging trends such as the concept of ` green' or environmentally- friendly HC in freight transport logistics are also introduced. Finally, the paper discusses the need of using hybrid optimization methods, such as simheuristics and learnheuristics, in solving some of the previously identified challenges in real- life scenarios dominated by uncertainty and dynamic conditions.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness & FEDER (TRA2013-48180-C3-P, TRA2015-71883-REDT), The Erasmus+ program (2016-1-ES01-KA108-023465), the Ibero American Program of Science and Technology for Development (CYTED2014-515RT-0489), the CAN Foundation (CAN2014-3758, CAN2015-70473), and the Spanish Ministry of Education (FPU-14/00024).Serrano-Hernandez, A.; Juan, AA.; Faulin, J.; Perez-Bernabeu, E. (2017). Horizontal collaboration in freight transport: concepts, benefits and environmental challenges. SORT. Statistics and Operations Research Transactions. 41(2):393-414. https://doi.org/10.2436/20.8080.02.65S39341441

Combinatorial auction for transportation matching service: Formulation and adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under Corp Lab @ Universit

Co-distribución para logística urbana: análisis de experiencias internacionales

Population growth has been accompanied by an increase in the percentage of people living in urban centers in both developed and non-developed countries. These areas with high population density generate an increase in commercial activity, with urban freight transport being a key factor, as it provides the products marketed by its stores. However, market capillarity, strict time windows and lack of infrastructure cause this activity to be carried out inefficiently and therefore, at a high cost. Moreover, urban freight transportation affects other externalities such as contamination, noise and existing traffic congestion. Several authors have proposed co-distribution as a way to improve the distribution system and mitigate the problems mentioned above. This article aims to gather and analyze information on the different methods used in co-distribution in different parts of the world, supported by practical experiences. As a result, it is concluded that almost all articles published in this subject refer to the implementation of Urban Consolidation Centers, which, while mitigating several of the problems mentioned, they generally need support from the government to make them economically viable.El crecimiento en la población ha sido acompañado por un aumento en el porcentaje de las personas que habitan los centros urbanos, tanto en países desarrollados como no desarrollados. Estas zonas con alta densidad de población generan un aumento en la actividad comercial, siendo el transporte urbano de mercaderías un factor clave, ya que provee los productos comercializados por sus tiendas. Sin embargo, la capilaridad del mercado, estrictas ventanas horarias y falta de infraestructura provocan que esta actividad se realice de manera ineficiente y por lo tanto, a un costo elevado. Por otro lado, el transporte de mercaderías afecta otras externalidades como la contaminación, el ruido y la congestión de tránsito ya existente. Varios autores han investigado la co-distribución como una forma de mejorar el sistema de distribución urbana y mitigar los problemas anteriormente mencionados. Este artículo pretende recopilar y analizar la información sobre los diferentes métodos utilizados en co-distribución a nivel mundial con sustento en experiencias prácticas. Como resultado, se concluye que casi la totalidad de los artículos publicados en esta temática refieren a la implementación de Centros de Consolidación Urbanos (CCU), los cuales, si bien mitigan varios de los problemas mencionados, en general necesitan de apoyo por parte del gobierno para que sean económicamente viables

Service level, cost and environmental optimization of collaborative transportation

Less than truckload is an important type of road-based transportation. Based on real data and on a collaboration with industry, we show that a collaborative approach between companies offers important benefits. We propose to develop partnerships between shipping companies and to synchronize their shipments. Four operational collaborative schemes with different objectives are developed. The first one focuses on minimizing shipping costs for shippers. The second and third ones minimize the carrier’s costs and the environmental cost, respectively. The fourth one is a combination of all three. The results of our computational experiments demonstrate that collaboration lead to significant cost reductions

An auction for collaborative vehicle routing: Models and algorithms

Increasing competition and expectations from customers pressures carriers to further improve efficiency. Forming collaborations is essential for carriers to reach their targeted efficiency levels. In this study, we investigate an auction mechanism to facilitate collaboration amongst carriers while maintaining autonomy for the individual carriers. Multiple auction implementations are evaluated. As the underlying decision problem (which is a traditional vehicle routing problem) is known to be NP-hard, this auction mechanism has an important inherent complexity. Therefore, we use fast and efficient algorithms for the vehicle routing problem to ensure that the auction can be used in operational decision making. Numerical results are presented, indicating that the auction achieves a savings potential better than the thus far reported approaches in the literature. Managerial insights are discussed, particularly related to the properties of the auction and value of the information