Vehicle routing problem with parcel locker and public transportation: Goods delivery using mass-rapid-transit system

• Main Authors: NGUYEN, Pham K.M., YU, Vincent F., GUNAWAN, Aldy
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: Transportation
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8407; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/9410/viewcontent/Vehicle_Routing_Problem_with_Parcel_Locker_and_Public_Transportation.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The logistics industry is experiencing significant transformations with the emergence of modern technologies, well-established civil infrastructure, and mixed transportation methods. These changes are driven by the increase in mobility, sustainability, and eco-friendliness of logistics processes. As a result, recent works have focused on incorporating mixed fleets and omnichannel systems to the original vehicle routing problem which boosts the delivery system's efficiency, effectiveness, reliability, and customer satisfaction while reducing operational costs simultaneously. We augment the existing studies by proposing a new mathematical model that combines common mass rapid transit systems and delivery fleets to solve the traditional vehicle routing problem with time windows and delivery options. The model is tested and validated using commercial solver and 20 modified Gehring&Homberger's instances. The results look promising and ready for realistic adoption. However, the commercial solver faces a problem in solving larger instances. Therefore, it is required to develop efficient algorithms to achieve time-saving results with considerably small gaps from the achieved optimal solutions which can be considered as an extension for this work.