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Synchronized routing of active and passive means of transport

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Abstract

This paper addresses a routing problem where the fulfillment of transport requests requires two types of transport resources, namely, passive and active means of transport. The passive means are used for holding the cargo that is to be shipped from pickup to delivery locations. The active means take up the passive means and carry them from one location to another. Compared to classical vehicle routing problems, the additional challenge in this combined routing problem is that the operations of both transport resources have to be synchronized. In this paper, we provide a modeling approach for the joint routing of passive and active means of transport. We solve the problem by large neighborhood search meta-heuristics that utilize various problem-specific components, for example local search techniques for the routes of active and passive means. A computational study on a large set of benchmark instances is used for assessing the performance of the meta-heuristics.

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Acknowledgments

This research is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under project reference B02110263.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Business, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Gr. Steinstr. 73, 06108 , Halle, Germany

    Frank Meisel

  2. Faculty of Business Studies and Economics, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Herbert Kopfer

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  1. Frank Meisel
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  2. Herbert Kopfer
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Correspondence to Frank Meisel.

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Meisel, F., Kopfer, H. Synchronized routing of active and passive means of transport. OR Spectrum 36, 297–322 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00291-012-0310-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00291-012-0310-7

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