A Dynamic Optimization for Automotive Vehicle Shipment and Delivery

Abstract

The automotive industry has made much efforts to deliver finished vehicles to customers with speed and reliability. Decreasing the time a vehicle stays within an assembly plant from production release to shipment contributes to reduce the total order lead-time and consequently, the total transportation cost as well. Conventional shipment planning algorithms are limited in accommodating the dynamics of assembly plant operations as to finished vehicle shipment. This paper presents a market-based multi-agent shipment planning algorithm to optimize the performance of vehicle shipment process, capturing the operationally disruptive events. Experimental results using simulation show that the algorithm improves vehicle shipment performance with respect to lead time, labor efficiency, finished product quality, and transportation efficiency.