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Waiting Strategies for Anticipating Service Requests from Known Customer Locations

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  • Barrett W. Thomas

    (Department of Management Sciences, University of Iowa, 108 John Pappajohn Business Building, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1994)

Abstract

This paper considers a dynamic and stochastic routing problem in which information about customer locations and probabilistic information about future service requests are used to maximize the expected number of customers served by a single uncapacitated vehicle. The problem is modeled as a Markov decision process, and analytical results on the structure of the optimal policy are derived. For the case of a single dynamic customer, we completely characterize the optimal policy. Using the analytical results, we propose a real-time heuristic and demonstrate its effectiveness compared with a series of other intuitively appealing heuristics. We also use computational tests to determine the heuristic value of knowing both customer locations and probabilistic information about future service requests.

Suggested Citation

  • Barrett W. Thomas, 2007. "Waiting Strategies for Anticipating Service Requests from Known Customer Locations," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(3), pages 319-331, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:41:y:2007:i:3:p:319-331
    DOI: 10.1287/trsc.1060.0183
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    References listed on IDEAS

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