Controlling order circuity in pickup and delivery problems

This paper examines the effects of constraining order circuity during the course of a dynamic pickup and delivery routing algorithm. Order circuity, the ratio of actual to direct shipping distance, affects shipping performance metrics such as transit time and vehicle utilization. The paper begins by exploring the tradeoff between utilization and order circuity, and then describes the application of circuity controls within an algorithm implemented for automobile shipping. We found that circuity controls are more effective than standard least-cost insertion heuristics alone in producing efficient route solutions with lower frequency of anomalous order routings.Pickup and delivery Routing Metrics Dynamic Heuristics Applications