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Heuristics for dynamic vehicle routing problems with pickups and deliveries and time windows

Holborn, Penny Louise 2013. Heuristics for dynamic vehicle routing problems with pickups and deliveries and time windows. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.
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Abstract

The work presented in this thesis concerns the problem of dynamic vehicle routing. The motivation for this is the increasing demands on transportation services to deliver fast, efficient and reliable service. Systems are now needed for dispatching transportation requests that arrive dynamically throughout the scheduling horizon. Therefore the focus of this research is the dynamic pickup and delivery problem with time windows, where requests are not completely known in advance but become available during the scheduling horizon. All requests have to be satisfied by a given fleet of vehicles and each request has a pickup and delivery location, along with a time window at which services can take place. To solve the DPDPTW, our algorithm is embedded in a rolling horizon framework, thus allowing the problem to be viewed as a series of static sub-problems. This research begins by considering the static variant of the problem. Both heuristic and metaheuristic methods are applied and an analysis is performed across a range of well-known instances. Results competitive with the state of the art are obtained. For the dynamic problem, investigations are performed to identify how requests arriving dynamically should be incorporated into the solution. Varying degrees of urgency and proportions of dynamic requests have been examined. Further investigations look at improving the solutions over time and identifying appropriate improvement heuristics. Again competitive results are achieved across a range of instances from the literature. This continually increasing area of research covers many real-life problems such as a health courier service. Here, the problem consists of the pickup and delivery of mail, specimens and equipment between hospitals, GP surgeries and health centres. Final research applies our findings to a real-life example of this problem, both for static schedules and a real-time 24/7 service.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Status: Unpublished
Schools: Mathematics
Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics
Funders: EPSRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 30 March 2016
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2016 04:35
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/47742

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