Title of article
Intra marketoptimizationforexpresspackagecarrierswithstationtostation travel andproportionalsorting
Author/Authors
Luke Schenk ، نويسنده , , DiegoKlabjan، نويسنده ,
Issue Information
ماهنامه با شماره پیاپی سال 2010
Pages
13
From page
1749
To page
1761
Abstract
The flowofpackagesofanexpresspackagecarrierconsistsofpickupsatcostumerlocationsbycouriers
and deliveringthepackagestoalocalstationforsorting.Thepackagesarethentransportedtoamajor
regionalsortingfacilitycalledtheramp.Attheramp,packagescanbesortedagainbeforedepartingtoa
hub. Fromthehubtheyaremovedtothedestinationramp,wheretheentireprocessrepeatsinthe
reverse orderuntilultimatedeliveryofthepackagetotheendcustomer.Wefocusontheafternoonand
eveningoperationsconcerningstationsandtheramp.Sortingandtransportationdecisionsamongthese
locationsareconsidered.Themostimportantdecisionsare:(1)whichpackagestoaggregateatthe
stations,and(2)whatisthemostefficienttransportationamonglocationstomeettimedeadlinesat
the ramp.Severaloptionsformodelingthesortingprocessatstationsandtheramp,aswellasthe
possibilityofvehiclestravelingfromonestationtoanotherstationtoconsolidatevolumebefore
proceedingtotherampareconsidered.Wemodeltheseprocessesbymeansofadynamicprogram,
wheretimeperiodsrepresenttimeslicesintheafternoonandevening.Theoverallmodelissolvedby
approximatedynamicprogramming,wherethevaluefunctionisapproximatedbyalinearfunction.
Furtherstrategiesaredevelopedtospeedupthealgorithmanddecreasethetimeneededtofind
feasiblesolutions.Themethodologyistestedonseveralinstancesfromanexpresspackagecarrier.The
dynamicprogramsolutionsaresubstantiallybetterthanthecurrentbestpracticeandthebestsolutions
obtainedfromanintegerprogrammingformulationoftheproblem.
Keywords
Logistics , Approximate dynamic programming , Large-scale optimization
Journal title
Computers and Operations Research
Serial Year
2010
Journal title
Computers and Operations Research
Record number
927781
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