The Shared Customer Collaboration Vehicle Routing Problem

•We introduce the Shared Customer Collaboration Vehicle Routing Problem.•There are potential savings when carriers collaborate to serve shared customers.•Two alternative formulations are proposed and analyzed.•Extensive computational experiments are provided.•We quantify the potential benefits compa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of operational research Vol. 265; no. 3; pp. 1078 - 1093
Main Authors: Fernández, Elena, Roca-Riu, Mireia, Speranza, M. Grazia
Format: Journal Article Publication
Language:English
Published: Elsevier B.V 16.03.2018
Elsevier
Subjects:
90 Operations research, mathematical programming
90B Operations research and management science
90C Mathematical programming
Branch-and-cut algorithm
Carriers collaboration
Classificació AMS
Investigació operativa
Matemàtiques i estadística
Mixed integer programming
Operations research
Programació (Matemàtica)
Programming (Mathematics)
Urban logistics
Vehicle routing problem
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC
Urban logistics
Mixed integer programming
Carriers collaboration
Branch-and-cut algorithm
Vehicle routing problem
ISSN:0377-2217, 1872-6860
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:•We introduce the Shared Customer Collaboration Vehicle Routing Problem.•There are potential savings when carriers collaborate to serve shared customers.•Two alternative formulations are proposed and analyzed.•Extensive computational experiments are provided.•We quantify the potential benefits compared to the case when no collaboration exists. This paper introduces a new vehicle routing problem that arises in an urban area where several carriers operate and some of their customers have demand of service for more than one carrier. The problem, called Shared Customer Collaboration Vehicle Routing Problem, aims at reducing the overall operational cost in a collaboration framework among the carriers for the service of the shared customers. Alternative mathematical programming formulations are proposed for the problem that are solved with a branch-and-cut algorithm. Computational experiments on different sets of benchmark instances are run to assess the effectiveness of the formulations. Moreover, in order to estimate the savings coming from the collaboration, the optimal solutions are compared with the solutions obtained when carriers work independently from each other.
ISSN:0377-2217
1872-6860
DOI:10.1016/j.ejor.2017.08.051