Two-echelon routing problems,including variants such as the two-echelon vehicle routing problem(2E-VRP)and the two-echelon location routing problem(2E-LRP),involve assignment and location decisions.However,the two-ech...Two-echelon routing problems,including variants such as the two-echelon vehicle routing problem(2E-VRP)and the two-echelon location routing problem(2E-LRP),involve assignment and location decisions.However,the two-echelon time-constrained vehicle routing problem(2E-TVRP)that caters to from-linehaul-to-delivery practices does not involve assignment decisions.This routing problem variant for networks with two eche-lons has not yet attracted enough research interest.Localized or long-distance services suffer from the lack of the assignment decisions between satellites and customers.Therefore,the 2E-TVRP,rather than using assignment decisions,adopts time constraints to decide the routes on each of the two interacting echelons:large-capacity vehicles trans-port cargoes among satellites on the first echelon,and small-capacity vehicles deliver cargoes from satellites to customers on the second echelon.This study introduces a mixed integer linear programming model for the 2E-TVRP and proposes a heuristic algorithm that incorporates the savings algorithm followed by a variable neighborhood search phase.Illustrative examples are used to test the mathematical formulation and the heuristic and a case study is used to demonstrate that the heuristic can effectively solve realistic-size instances of the 2E-TVRP.展开更多
基金This research work was supported by the Research Grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China(grant number 71672005).
文摘Two-echelon routing problems,including variants such as the two-echelon vehicle routing problem(2E-VRP)and the two-echelon location routing problem(2E-LRP),involve assignment and location decisions.However,the two-echelon time-constrained vehicle routing problem(2E-TVRP)that caters to from-linehaul-to-delivery practices does not involve assignment decisions.This routing problem variant for networks with two eche-lons has not yet attracted enough research interest.Localized or long-distance services suffer from the lack of the assignment decisions between satellites and customers.Therefore,the 2E-TVRP,rather than using assignment decisions,adopts time constraints to decide the routes on each of the two interacting echelons:large-capacity vehicles trans-port cargoes among satellites on the first echelon,and small-capacity vehicles deliver cargoes from satellites to customers on the second echelon.This study introduces a mixed integer linear programming model for the 2E-TVRP and proposes a heuristic algorithm that incorporates the savings algorithm followed by a variable neighborhood search phase.Illustrative examples are used to test the mathematical formulation and the heuristic and a case study is used to demonstrate that the heuristic can effectively solve realistic-size instances of the 2E-TVRP.
