Online vehicle routing and scheduling with dynamic travel times

The developments in mobile communication technologies are a strong motivation for the study of dynamic vehicle routing and scheduling problems. In particular, the planned routes can be quickly modified to account for the occurrence of new customer requests, which might imply diverting a vehicle away from its current destination. In this paper, a previously developed problem-solving approach for a vehicle routing problem with dynamic requests and dynamic travel times is extended to account for more sophisticated communication means between the drivers and the central dispatch office. Computational results are reported to empirically demonstrate the benefits of this extension.     

Two-stage hybrid flow shop scheduling with dynamic job arrivals

Motivated by applications in semiconductor manufacturing industry, we consider a two-stage hybrid flow shop where a discrete machine is followed by a batching machine. In this paper, we analyze the computational complexity of a class of two-machine problems with dynamic job arrivals. For the problems belonging to P we present polynomial algorithms. For the NP-complete problems we propose the heuristics, and then establish the upper bounds on the worst case performance ratios of the heuristics. In addition, we give the improved heuristics that can achieve better performances.     

A dynamic vehicle routing problem with time-dependent travel times

In this paper we present a formulation for the dynamic vehicle routing problem with time-dependent travel times. We also present a genetic algorithm to solve the problem. The problem is a pick-up or delivery vehicle routing problem with soft time windows in which we consider multiple vehicles with different capacities, real-time service requests, and real-time variations in travel times between demand nodes.The performance of the genetic algorithm is evaluated by comparing its results with exact solutions and lower bounds for randomly generated test problems. For small size problems with up to 10 demands, the genetic algorithm provides almost the same results as the exact solutions, while its computation time is less than 10% of the time required to produce the exact solutions. For the problems with 30 demand nodes, the genetic algorithm results have less than 8% gap with lower bounds.This research also shows that as the uncertainty in the travel time information increases, a dynamic routing strategy that takes the real-time traffic information into account becomes increasingly superior to a static one. This is clear when we compare the static and dynamic routing strategies in problem scenarios that have different levels of uncertainty in travel time information. In additional tests on a simulated network, the proposed algorithm works well in dealing with situations in which accidents cause significant congestion in some part of the transportation network.     

Adaptive granular local search heuristic for a dynamic vehicle routing problem

The advance of communication and information technologies based on satellite and wireless networks have allowed transportation companies to benefit from real-time information for dynamic vehicle routing with time windows. During daily operations, we consider the case in which customers can place requests such that their demand and location are stochastic variables. The time windows at customer locations can be violated although lateness costs are incurred. The objective is to define a set of vehicle routes which are dynamically updated to accommodate new customers in order to maximize the expected profit. This is the difference between the total revenue and the sum of lateness costs and costs associated with the total distance traveled. The solution approach makes use of a new constructive heuristic that scatters vehicles in the service area and an adaptive granular local search procedure. The strategies of letting a vehicle wait, positioning a vehicle in a region where customers are likely to appear, and diverting a vehicle away from its current destination are integrated within a granular local search heuristic. The performance of the proposed approach is assessed in test problems based on real-life Brazilian transportation companies.     

Vehicle routing problem with stochastic travel times including soft time windows and service costs

This paper studies a vehicle routing problem with soft time windows and stochastic travel times. A model is developed that considers both transportation costs (total distance traveled, number of vehicles used and drivers' total expected overtime) and service costs (early and late arrivals). We propose a Tabu Search method to solve this model. An initialization algorithm is developed to construct feasible routes by taking into account the travel time stochasticity. Solutions provided by the Tabu Search algorithm are further improved by a post-optimization method. We conduct our computational experiments for well-known problem instances. Results show that our Tabu Search method performs well by obtaining very good final solutions in a reasonable amount of time.     

Vehicle routing under time-dependent travel times: The impact of congestion avoidance

Daily traffic congestion forms a major problem for businesses such as logistic service providers and distribution firms. It causes late arrivals at customers and additional costs for hiring the truck drivers. Such costs caused by traffic congestion can be reduced by taking into account and avoiding predictable traffic congestion within vehicle route plans. In the literature, various strategies are proposed to avoid traffic congestion, such as selecting alternative routes, changing the customer visit sequences, and changing the vehicle-customer assignments. We investigate the impact of these and other strategies in off-line vehicle routing on the performance of vehicle route plans in reality. For this purpose, we develop a set of vehicle routing problem instances on real road networks, and a speed model that reflects the key elements of peak hour traffic congestion. The instances are solved for different levels of congestion avoidance using a modified Dijkstra algorithm and a restricted dynamic programming heuristic. Computational experiments show that 99% of late arrivals at customers can be eliminated if traffic congestion is accounted for off-line. On top of that, about 87% of the extra duty time caused by traffic congestion can be eliminated by clever congestion avoidance strategies.     

一种改进的动态源路由协议研究

原有的权值簇生成算法及其改进都未能很好解决节点移动性问题。针对这一点在一种新的改进权值簇生成算法基础上,提出了新的基于簇的动态源路由协议NCDSR（New Clustered Dynamic Source Routing）。该权值簇生成算法克服了原有算法的在处理节点的移动速度上的缺陷,在计算权重、生成簇头时,对节点的绝对移动速度进行了判断和限定。NCDSR在GloMoSim模拟器下定义了数据结构,进行了模拟仿真,实验证明当节点的绝对移动速度超过限定值时,NCDSR协议端到端延迟、吞吐率和投递率等性能在网络中载的情况下是可以接收的,较原有的动态源路由协议有效。     

Vehicle routing problem with a heterogeneous fleet and time windows

In this paper, a problem variant of the vehicle routing problem with time windows is introduced to consider vehicle routing with a heterogeneous fleet, a limited number of vehicles and time windows. A method that extends an existing tabu search procedure to solve the problem is then proposed. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, experiments are conducted on a large set of test cases, which comprises several benchmark problems from numerous problem variants of the vehicle routing problem with a heterogeneous fleet. It is observed that the proposed method can be used to give reasonably good results for these problem variants. In addition, some ideas are presented to advance the research in heuristics, such as fair reporting standards, publication of benchmark problems and executable routines developed for algorithmic comparison.     

考虑时间窗与随机航行时间的船舶航线规划

良好的航线设计是船运公司降低运营成本,提高服务质量的关键。船舶运输中存在航行时间不确定,码头资源稀缺等特点,基于此将其航线问题抽象为考虑时间窗与随机旅行时间的多重流动旅行商问题。针对航行时间的随机性,设计了线性近似方法,提出了虚拟时间窗的概念,构建了初始模型与修正模型;给出了该问题的一个算例,验证了模型与算法的有效性和合理性。     

用于Ad Hoc网络的改进的动态源路由协议

为了提高源路由协议(DSR)的性能,平衡整个网络的能量,减少拥塞,提高伸缩性和延长网络生存时间,对发送的RREP和RREQ包结构做了改进,加入了新的延迟发送机制,提出了一种新的协议IDSR,并用仿真对改进后的IDSR路由协议进行了性能评估。     

使用新判据的改进型DSR协议

传统的无线Mesh网络路由协议都集中于寻找具有最小跳数的路径,但是,这样的路径可能会包含高损耗的链路,从而导致网络吞吐量的大幅度降低。因此,新的路由算法通过进一步考虑链路质量来选择更好的路由。首先,为方便新的路由判据的使用,局部优化了传统的DSR协议为改进的DSR协议。然后,为实现路径链路质量最优与最小跳数之间的均衡,提出一种新的路由判据O-WCETT,将其与WCETT（累计期望传输时间）、HOP（最小跳数）分别应用于改进后的DSR（动态源路由）协议中,采用NS2仿真软件对其性能进行评估。仿真结果表明,在相同的无线传输和网络规模条件下,使用新路由判据O-WCETT的改进型DSR协议使得网络的分组投递率性能更高,端到端平均时延和路由开销都明显减小,并且随着节点移动速度的加快,使用新判据的DSR协议带来的网络性能改善更为显著。     

A parametric fuzzy logic approach to dynamic part routing under full routing flexibility

Manufacturing flexibility is a competitive weapon for surviving today’s highly variable and volatile markets. It is critical therefore, to select the appropriate type of flexibility for a given manufacturing system, and to design effective strategies for using this flexibility in a way to improve the system performance. This study focuses on full routing flexibility which includes not only alternative machines for operations but also alternative sequences of operations for producing the same work piece. Upon completion of an operation, an on-line dispatching decision called part routing is required to choose one of the alternatives as the next step. This study introduces three new approaches, including a fuzzy logic approach, for dynamic part routing. The fuzzy part routing system adapts itself to the characteristics of a given flexible manufacturing system (FMS) installation by setting the key parameters of the membership functions as well as its Takagi-Sugeno type rule base, in such a way to capture the bottlenecks in the environment. Thus, the model does not require a search or training for the parameter set. The proposed approaches are tested against several crisp and fuzzy routing algorithms taken from the literature, by means of extensive simulation experiments in hypothetical FMS environments under variable system configurations. The results show that the proposed fuzzy approach remains robust across different system configurations and flexibility levels, and performs favourably compared to the other algorithms. The results also reveal important characteristic behaviour regarding routing flexibility.     

Anticipatory routing of police helicopters

We have developed a decision support application for the Dutch Aviation Police and Air Support unit for routing their helicopters in anticipation of unknown future incidents. These incidents are not known in advance, yet do require a swift response. A response might include the dispatch of a police helicopter to support the police on the ground. If a helicopter takes too long to arrive at the crime scene, it might be too late to assist. Hence, helicopters have to be proximate when an incident happens to increase the likelihood of being able to support the police on the ground in apprehending suspects. We propose the use of a forecasting technique, followed by a routing heuristic to maximize the number of incidents where a helicopter provides a successful assist. We have implemented these techniques in a decision support application in collaboration with the Dutch Aviation Police and Air Support. Using numerical experiments, we show that our application has the potential to improve the success rate with a factor nine. The Dutch Air Support and Aviation Police are now using the application.     

带时间窗口动态车辆路径规划模型及其求解算法

基于事件触发,把带时间窗口动态车辆路径规划问题（DVRPTW）分解成一系列延迟快照,在快照基础上建立相应的动态数学模型,并提出双缓冲区改进大邻域搜索算法进行求解。利用算法的特点,实现新请求无缝插入。采用Solomon设计的56个100节点范例和Lackner相应的动态测试数据,经不同类型动态实例的实验表明,所建立的模型和给出的算法是有效的。     

A large neighbourhood search heuristic for ship routing and scheduling with split loads

The purpose of this paper is to present and solve a new, important planning problem faced by many shipping companies dealing with the transport of bulk products. These shipping companies are committed to carrying some contract cargoes and will try to derive additional revenue from optional spot cargoes. In most of the literature on ship routing and scheduling problems a cargo cannot be transported by more than one ship. By introducing split loads this restriction is removed and each cargo can be transported by several ships. In this paper we propose a large neighbourhood search heuristic for the ship routing and scheduling problem with split loads. Computational results show that the heuristic provides good solutions to real-life instances within reasonable time. It is also shown that introducing split loads can yield significant improvements.     

A record-to-record travel algorithm for solving the heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem

In the heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem (HVRP), several different types of vehicles can be used to service the customers. The types of vehicles differ with respect to capacity, fixed cost, and variable cost. We assume that the number of vehicles of each type is fixed and equal to a constant. We must decide how to make the best use of the fixed fleet of heterogeneous vehicles.     

基于动态路由序列生成模型的多标签文本分类方法

现实世界中,多标签文本比单标签文本具有更广泛的应用场景,但其输出空间的庞大给分类任务带来了更多的挑战。将多标签文本分类问题看作标签序列生成问题,把序列生成模型（SGM）应用于多标签文本分类领域,并针对该模型的顺序结构容易产生累积误差等不足,构建了基于动态路由（DR）的序列生成模型（DR-SGM）。该模型基于Encoder-Decoder模式：Encoder层中使用双向长短期记忆（Bi-LSTM）神经网络+Attention进行语义信息编码;Decoder层设计了一种基于动态路由的解码器结构,该结构在隐含层后添加了动态路由聚合层,利用路由参数的全局共享减弱了累积误差产生的影响。同时,动态路由能捕获文本中部分-部分、部分-整体的位置信息,并且通过优化动态路由算法进一步提高了语义聚合效果。将DR-SGM应用于多标签文本分类,实验结果表明,在RCV1-V2、AAPD和Slashdot数据集上,多标签文本分类效果得到了有效的提升。     

A GRASP approach to transporter scheduling and routing at a shipyard

We address the transporter scheduling and routing problem at a shipyard, which can be transformed into parallel machine scheduling with sequence-dependent setup times and precedence constraints. The objective is to maximize the workload balance among transporters under the time constraint that all assembly blocks should be transported in the predetermined period. We develop the GRASP algorithm for transporter scheduling and routing. Through simulation experiments we analyze some aspects of the developed GRASP algorithm and verify the performance of the developed GRASP algorithm. The comparison experiments show that the developed GRASP algorithm is a promising heuristic for transporter scheduling and routing.