Integrated planning of loaded and empty container movements

Abstract

Efficiently planning drayage operations is an important task for transportation companies since these operations constitute a large part of the cost of an intermodal transport. In this paper a full truckload vehicle routing problem for transporting loaded and empty containers in drayage operations is studied. For empty container transports either the origin or the destination is not predefined. The problem is formulated as an asymmetric multiple vehicle Travelling Salesman Problem with Time Windows (am-TSPTW). Two solution approaches are proposed: a sequential and an integrated approach. For both approaches, a single and a two-phase deterministic annealing algorithm are presented. Results show that the proposed algorithms are able to find good quality solutions in a small amount of computation time. The integrated approach clearly outperforms the sequential one and the results confirm the advantage of using a two-phase algorithm for vehicle routing problems with hierarchical objectives. Finally, it is shown that the proposed integrated solution method improves previous results on a similar problem.

Prerequisites for the modelling of empty container supply chains

“…The difficulty in applying optimisation to supply chains lies in the development of a model that would represent the complexity and uncertainty of the supply chain with satisfying accuracy and would still be relatively simple to solve (Harrison, 2005). Empty-container repositioning is modelled in the literature as a location problem (Mittal et al, 2013), routing problem (Braekers et al, 2013a), routing and assignment problem (Nossack & Pesch, 2013), inventory control problems (Dang et al, 2012) or cargo flow optimisation problem (Song & Dong, 2012). The focus of location problems is the inland depot localisation.…”

Optimization of empty container movements using street-turn: Application to Valencia hinterland

“…They developed mathemati-cal models and algorithms to support a collaborative planning and scheduling of container operations for supply chain logistics. Very recently, Braekers, Caris, and Janssens (2013) have formulated the problem of drayage planning as an asymmetric multiple-vehicle Travelling Salesman Problem with Time Windows, solving it using a two-phased deterministic annealing.…”

A set-covering formulation for a drayage problem with single and double container loads

“…Second, in this case study routes are performed by two types of trucks carrying one or two containers, respectively, whereas most of the related literature concerns one container per truck (Wang et al 2002;Jula et al 2005;Zhang et al 2011Zhang et al , 2010Braekers et al 2013;Nossack and Pesch 2013). The case more than one container has been dealt with only recently (Vidovic et al 2017;Funke and Kopfer 2016).…”

“…First, in most of the related studies containers are supposed to be left at customer locations, and drivers can move to other customers, thereby bypassing packing and unpacking operations (Wang et al 2002;Jula et al 2005;Chung et al 2007;Zhang et al 2010Zhang et al , 2011Vidovic et al 2011;Braekers et al 2013;Nossack and Pesch 2013). Conversely, in this case study trucks move loaded containers to import customers and drivers wait for the empty containers, while unpacking operations are performed.…”