IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transb/v46y2012i10p1591-1606.html

A continuous approximation model for the fleet composition problem

Author

Listed:
  • Jabali, Ola
  • Gendreau, Michel
  • Laporte, Gilbert

Abstract

This paper presents a continuous approximation model to determine the long-term vehicle fleet composition needed to perform distribution activities. The problem is a realistic variant of the vehicle routing problem, in which the fleet size and mix are also decision variables. The types of vehicles differ in terms of their capacities, fixed costs and variable costs. The objective is to minimize the total cost, subject to capacity and route duration constraints. We assume customers are distributed over a circular service region partitioned into zones, each of which is serviced by a single vehicle. The routing costs are assessed through a continuous approximation model. We present a mixed integer non-linear formulation for the problem, followed by computationally efficient upper and lower bounding procedures. The performance of the model and of its bounds is assessed on several test instances.

Suggested Citation

  • Jabali, Ola & Gendreau, Michel & Laporte, Gilbert, 2012. "A continuous approximation model for the fleet composition problem," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 46(10), pages 1591-1606.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transb:v:46:y:2012:i:10:p:1591-1606
    DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2012.06.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191261512000884
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.trb.2012.06.004?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Y H Lee & J I Kim & K H Kang & K H Kim, 2008. "A heuristic for vehicle fleet mix problem using tabu search and set partitioning," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(6), pages 833-841, June.
    2. Carlos F. Daganzo, 1987. "Modeling Distribution Problems with Time Windows. Part II: Two Customer Types," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(3), pages 180-187, August.
    3. Haugland, Dag & Ho, Sin C. & Laporte, Gilbert, 2007. "Designing delivery districts for the vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 180(3), pages 997-1010, August.
    4. John Gunnar Carlsson, 2012. "Dividing a Territory Among Several Vehicles," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 24(4), pages 565-577, November.
    5. Francis, Peter & Smilowitz, Karen, 2006. "Modeling techniques for periodic vehicle routing problems," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 872-884, December.
    6. Carlos F. Daganzo, 1987. "Modeling Distribution Problems with Time Windows: Part I," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(3), pages 171-179, August.
    7. Newell, Gordon F. & Daganzo, Carlos F., 1986. "Design of multiple-vehicle delivery tours--I a ring-radial network," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 345-363, October.
    8. Langevin, André & Soumis, François, 1989. "Design of multiple-vehicle delivery tours satisfying time constraints," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 123-138, April.
    9. David M. Stein, 1978. "An Asymptotic, Probabilistic Analysis of a Routing Problem," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 3(2), pages 89-101, May.
    10. Daganzo, Carlos F., 1984. "The length of tours in zones of different shapes," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 135-145, April.
    11. Carlos F. Daganzo, 2005. "Logistics Systems Analysis," Springer Books, Springer, edition 0, number 978-3-540-27516-9, October.
    12. Gilbert Laporte, 2009. "Fifty Years of Vehicle Routing," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(4), pages 408-416, November.
    13. Salhi, Said & Rand, Graham K., 1993. "Incorporating vehicle routing into the vehicle fleet composition problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 313-330, May.
    14. Patrick Jaillet, 1988. "A Priori Solution of a Traveling Salesman Problem in Which a Random Subset of the Customers Are Visited," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 36(6), pages 929-936, December.
    15. Robuste, Francesc & Daganzo, Carlos F. & Souleyrette, Reginald R., 1990. "Implementing vehicle routing models," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 263-286, August.
    16. Chris Groër & Bruce Golden & Edward Wasil, 2009. "The Consistent Vehicle Routing Problem," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 11(4), pages 630-643, February.
    17. Langevin, André & Mbaraga, Pontien & Campbell, James F., 1996. "Continuous approximation models in freight distribution: An overview," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 163-188, June.
    18. Carlos F. Daganzo, 1984. "The Distance Traveled to Visit N Points with a Maximum of C Stops per Vehicle: An Analytic Model and an Application," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(4), pages 331-350, November.
    19. Hongsheng Zhong & Randolph W. Hall & Maged Dessouky, 2007. "Territory Planning and Vehicle Dispatching with Driver Learning," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(1), pages 74-89, February.
    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. Anna Franceschetti & Ola Jabali & Gilbert Laporte, 2017. "Continuous approximation models in freight distribution management," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 25(3), pages 413-433, October.
    2. Franceschetti, Anna & Honhon, Dorothée & Laporte, Gilbert & Woensel, Tom Van & Fransoo, Jan C., 2017. "Strategic fleet planning for city logistics," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 19-40.
    3. Langevin, André & Mbaraga, Pontien & Campbell, James F., 1996. "Continuous approximation models in freight distribution: An overview," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 163-188, June.
    4. Diana, Marco & Dessouky, Maged M. & Xia, Nan, 2006. "A model for the fleet sizing of demand responsive transportation services with time windows," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 40(8), pages 651-666, September.
    5. Lei, Chao & Ouyang, Yanfeng, 2018. "Continuous approximation for demand balancing in solving large-scale one-commodity pickup and delivery problems," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 90-109.
    6. 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.
    7. Zhen, Lu & Gao, Jiajing & Tan, Zheyi & Laporte, Gilbert & Baldacci, Roberto, 2023. "Territorial design for customers with demand frequency," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(1), pages 82-101.
    8. Ansari, Sina & Başdere, Mehmet & Li, Xiaopeng & Ouyang, Yanfeng & Smilowitz, Karen, 2018. "Advancements in continuous approximation models for logistics and transportation systems: 1996–2016," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 229-252.
    9. Huang, Michael & Smilowitz, Karen R. & Balcik, Burcu, 2013. "A continuous approximation approach for assessment routing in disaster relief," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 20-41.
    10. Mehdi Nourinejad & Matthew J. Roorda, 2017. "A continuous approximation model for the fleet composition problem on the rectangular grid," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 39(2), pages 373-401, March.
    11. Arevalo-Ascanio, Rafael & De Meyer, Annelies & Gevaers, Roel & Guisson, Ruben & Dewulf, Wouter, 2024. "From operational to strategic modelling: A continuous multi-scale approach for last-mile analysis," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    12. Koç, Çağrı & Bektaş, Tolga & Jabali, Ola & Laporte, Gilbert, 2016. "Thirty years of heterogeneous vehicle routing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 249(1), pages 1-21.
    13. Novaes, Antonio G. N. & Graciolli, Odacir D., 1999. "Designing multi-vehicle delivery tours in a grid-cell format," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 119(3), pages 613-634, December.
    14. Lei, Chao & Zhang, Qian & Ouyang, Yanfeng, 2017. "Planning of parking enforcement patrol considering drivers’ parking payment behavior," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 375-392.
    15. Melih Çelik & Özlem Ergun & Pınar Keskinocak, 2015. "The Post-Disaster Debris Clearance Problem Under Incomplete Information," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 63(1), pages 65-85, February.
    16. del Castillo, Jose M., 1998. "A heuristic for the traveling salesman problem based on a continuous approximation," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 123-152, April.
    17. Ellegood, William A. & Campbell, James F. & North, Jeremy, 2015. "Continuous approximation models for mixed load school bus routing," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 182-198.
    18. Ouyang, Yanfeng, 2007. "Design of vehicle routing zones for large-scale distribution systems," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 41(10), pages 1079-1093, December.
    19. Zhou, Lin & Zhen, Lu & Baldacci, Roberto & Boschetti, Marco & Dai, Ying & Lim, Andrew, 2021. "A Heuristic Algorithm for solving a large-scale real-world territory design problem," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    20. Figliozzi, Miguel Andres, 2009. "Planning approximations to the average length of vehicle routing problems with time window constraints," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 438-447, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:transb:v:46:y:2012:i:10:p:1591-1606. 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/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/548/description#description .

    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.