IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v265y2018i2p765-778.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Multi-Depot Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problem with Delivery Options Arising in the Last Mile Distribution

Author

Listed:
  • Zhou, Lin
  • Baldacci, Roberto
  • Vigo, Daniele
  • Wang, Xu

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a new city logistics problem arising in the last mile distribution of e-commerce. The problem involves two levels of routing problems. The first requires a design of the routes for a vehicle fleet located at the depots to transport the customer demands to a subset of the satellites. The second level concerns the routing of a vehicle fleet from the satellites to serve all of the customers. A feature of the problem is that customers may provide different delivery options, allowing them to pick up their packages at intermediate pickup facilities. The objective is to minimize the total distribution cost. To solve the problem, a hybrid multi-population genetic algorithm is proposed. An effective heuristic algorithm is designed to generate initial solutions, and several procedures are designed to better manage the population as well as exploit and explore the solution space. The proposed method is tested on a large family of instances, including a real-world instance; the computational results obtained show the effectiveness of the different components of the algorithm.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhou, Lin & Baldacci, Roberto & Vigo, Daniele & Wang, Xu, 2018. "A Multi-Depot Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problem with Delivery Options Arising in the Last Mile Distribution," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 265(2), pages 765-778.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:265:y:2018:i:2:p:765-778
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2017.08.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221717307233
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2017.08.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grangier, Philippe & Gendreau, Michel & Lehuédé, Fabien & Rousseau, Louis-Martin, 2016. "An adaptive large neighborhood search for the two-echelon multiple-trip vehicle routing problem with satellite synchronization," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 254(1), pages 80-91.
    2. Madsen, Oli B. G., 1983. "Methods for solving combined two level location-routing problems of realistic dimensions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 295-301, March.
    3. Thibaut Vidal & Teodor Gabriel Crainic & Michel Gendreau & Nadia Lahrichi & Walter Rei, 2012. "A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for Multidepot and Periodic Vehicle Routing Problems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 60(3), pages 611-624, June.
    4. Ghiani, Gianpaolo & Improta, Gennaro, 2000. "An efficient transformation of the generalized vehicle routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 11-17, April.
    5. Baldacci, R. & Dell'Amico, M., 2010. "Heuristic algorithms for the multi-depot ring-star problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 203(1), pages 270-281, May.
    6. Teodor Gabriel Crainic & Nicoletta Ricciardi & Giovanni Storchi, 2009. "Models for Evaluating and Planning City Logistics Systems," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(4), pages 432-454, November.
    7. Jacobsen, S. K. & Madsen, O. B. G., 1980. "A comparative study of heuristics for a two-level routing-location problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 5(6), pages 378-387, December.
    8. Naji-Azimi, Z. & Renaud, J. & Ruiz, A. & Salari, M., 2012. "A covering tour approach to the location of satellite distribution centers to supply humanitarian aid," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 222(3), pages 596-605.
    9. S. Lin & B. W. Kernighan, 1973. "An Effective Heuristic Algorithm for the Traveling-Salesman Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 21(2), pages 498-516, April.
    10. Guido Perboli & Roberto Tadei & Daniele Vigo, 2011. "The Two-Echelon Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem: Models and Math-Based Heuristics," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(3), pages 364-380, August.
    11. Tolga Bektaş & Güneş Erdoğan & Stefan Røpke, 2011. "Formulations and Branch-and-Cut Algorithms for the Generalized Vehicle Routing Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(3), pages 299-316, August.
    12. Allahyari, Somayeh & Salari, Majid & Vigo, Daniele, 2015. "A hybrid metaheuristic algorithm for the multi-depot covering tour vehicle routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 242(3), pages 756-768.
    13. Mads Jepsen & Simon Spoorendonk & Stefan Ropke, 2013. "A Branch-and-Cut Algorithm for the Symmetric Two-Echelon Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(1), pages 23-37, February.
    14. Rieck, Julia & Ehrenberg, Carsten & Zimmermann, Jürgen, 2014. "Many-to-many location-routing with inter-hub transport and multi-commodity pickup-and-delivery," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 236(3), pages 863-878.
    15. Govindan, K. & Jafarian, A. & Khodaverdi, R. & Devika, K., 2014. "Two-echelon multiple-vehicle location–routing problem with time windows for optimization of sustainable supply chain network of perishable food," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 9-28.
    16. Roberto Baldacci & Aristide Mingozzi & Roberto Roberti & Roberto Wolfler Calvo, 2013. "An Exact Algorithm for the Two-Echelon Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 61(2), pages 298-314, April.
    17. Drexl, Michael & Schneider, Michael, 2015. "A survey of variants and extensions of the location-routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 241(2), pages 283-308.
    18. Prodhon, Caroline & Prins, Christian, 2014. "A survey of recent research on location-routing problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 238(1), pages 1-17.
    19. Paolo Toth & Daniele Vigo, 2003. "The Granular Tabu Search and Its Application to the Vehicle-Routing Problem," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 15(4), pages 333-346, November.
    20. Nguyen, Viet-Phuong & Prins, Christian & Prodhon, Caroline, 2012. "Solving the two-echelon location routing problem by a GRASP reinforced by a learning process and path relinking," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 216(1), pages 113-126.
    21. Diego Cattaruzza & Nabil Absi & Dominique Feillet & Jesús González-Feliu, 2017. "Vehicle routing problems for city logistics," EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, Springer;EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies, vol. 6(1), pages 51-79, March.
    22. R. Baldacci & M. Dell'Amico & J. Salazar González, 2007. "The Capacitated m -Ring-Star Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 55(6), pages 1147-1162, December.
    23. Hà, Minh Hoàng & Bostel, Nathalie & Langevin, André & Rousseau, Louis-Martin, 2013. "An exact algorithm and a metaheuristic for the multi-vehicle covering tour problem with a constraint on the number of vertices," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 226(2), pages 211-220.
    24. Soysal, Mehmet & Bloemhof-Ruwaard, Jacqueline M. & Bektaş, Tolga, 2015. "The time-dependent two-echelon capacitated vehicle routing problem with environmental considerations," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 366-378.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhu, Stuart X. & Ursavas, Evrim, 2018. "Design and analysis of a satellite network with direct delivery in the pharmaceutical industry," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 190-207.
    2. Li, Hongqi & Liu, Yinying & Jian, Xiaorong & Lu, Yingrong, 2018. "The two-echelon distribution system considering the real-time transshipment capacity varying," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 239-260.
    3. Li, Hongqi & Zhang, Lu & Lv, Tan & Chang, Xinyu, 2016. "The two-echelon time-constrained vehicle routing problem in linehaul-delivery systems," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 169-188.
    4. Sluijk, Natasja & Florio, Alexandre M. & Kinable, Joris & Dellaert, Nico & Van Woensel, Tom, 2023. "Two-echelon vehicle routing problems: A literature review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(3), pages 865-886.
    5. Lin Zhou & Xu Wang & Lin Ni & Yun Lin, 2016. "Location-Routing Problem with Simultaneous Home Delivery and Customer’s Pickup for City Distribution of Online Shopping Purchases," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(8), pages 1-20, August.
    6. Mühlbauer, Ferdinand & Fontaine, Pirmin, 2021. "A parallelised large neighbourhood search heuristic for the asymmetric two-echelon vehicle routing problem with swap containers for cargo-bicycles," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 289(2), pages 742-757.
    7. Yue Lu & Maoxiang Lang & Xueqiao Yu & Shiqi Li, 2019. "A Sustainable Multimodal Transport System: The Two-Echelon Location-Routing Problem with Consolidation in the Euro–China Expressway," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-25, October.
    8. Drexl, Michael & Schneider, Michael, 2015. "A survey of variants and extensions of the location-routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 241(2), pages 283-308.
    9. Jie, Wanchen & Yang, Jun & Zhang, Min & Huang, Yongxi, 2019. "The two-echelon capacitated electric vehicle routing problem with battery swapping stations: Formulation and efficient methodology," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 272(3), pages 879-904.
    10. Janjevic, Milena & Winkenbach, Matthias & Merchán, Daniel, 2019. "Integrating collection-and-delivery points in the strategic design of urban last-mile e-commerce distribution networks," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 37-67.
    11. Liu, Dan & Yan, Pengyu & Pu, Ziyuan & Wang, Yinhai & Kaisar, Evangelos I., 2021. "Hybrid artificial immune algorithm for optimizing a Van-Robot E-grocery delivery system," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    12. Sahar Validi & Arijit Bhattacharya & P. J. Byrne, 2020. "Sustainable distribution system design: a two-phase DoE-guided meta-heuristic solution approach for a three-echelon bi-objective AHP-integrated location-routing model," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 290(1), pages 191-222, July.
    13. Huang, Yixiao & Savelsbergh, Martin & Zhao, Lei, 2018. "Designing logistics systems for home delivery in densely populated urban areas," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 95-125.
    14. Bergmann, Felix M. & Wagner, Stephan M. & Winkenbach, Matthias, 2020. "Integrating first-mile pickup and last-mile delivery on shared vehicle routes for efficient urban e-commerce distribution," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 26-62.
    15. Younes Rahmani & Wahiba Ramdane Cherif-Khettaf & Ammar Oulamara, 2016. "The two-echelon multi-products location-routing problem with pickup and delivery: formulation and heuristic approaches," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(4), pages 999-1019, February.
    16. Ben Mohamed, Imen & Klibi, Walid & Sadykov, Ruslan & Şen, Halil & Vanderbeck, François, 2023. "The two-echelon stochastic multi-period capacitated location-routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 645-667.
    17. Li, Hongqi & Wang, Haotian & Chen, Jun & Bai, Ming, 2021. "Two-echelon vehicle routing problem with satellite bi-synchronization," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 288(3), pages 775-793.
    18. Nan Ding & Manman Li & Jianming Hao, 2023. "A Two-Phase Approach to Routing a Mixed Fleet with Intermediate Depots," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-21, April.
    19. Glock, Katharina & Meyer, Anne, 2023. "Spatial coverage in routing and path planning problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 305(1), pages 1-20.
    20. Veenstra, Marjolein & Roodbergen, Kees Jan & Coelho, Leandro C. & Zhu, Stuart X., 2018. "A simultaneous facility location and vehicle routing problem arising in health care logistics in the Netherlands," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 268(2), pages 703-715.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:265:y:2018:i:2:p:765-778. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.