(Book) Pro-Active Dynamic Vehicle Routing
(Book) Pro-Active Dynamic Vehicle Routing
Pro-active Dynamic
Vehicle Routing
Keywords: Perishable goods, Dynamic vehicle routing, Real-time control, Request forecasting, Stochas-
tic knowledge, Past request information, Tabu Search, Request data quality
ix
x Foreword
earlier approaches that assume the availability of distributions which can be defined
in a closed form, the utilized stochastic knowledge is systematically attained by the
offline application of a sophisticated cluster analysis that integrates specific quality
restrictions. Therefore, the proposed method can be applied to a larger number of
real-world applications.
In order to analyze the performance of the proposed concept, extensive computa-
tional experiments are conducted. The results of these experiments strongly indicate
that the integration of the generated dummy customers is promising when a mini-
mum temporal as well as spatial diversity of the past request data is given. This
is impressively shown by several specifically designed evaluations. On top of that,
besides the degree of structural distortion, the degree of structural diversity (dosd)
is introduced as a new measure that allows an offline prediction as to whether the
integration of stochastic knowledge is useful for a given past request data set, or not.
Specifically, a strong correlation between the dosd and the improvements that can
be yielded is statistically proven. Furthermore, the PhD thesis provides a detailed
analysis of the impact of allowed vehicle en-route diversions. In contrast to the lit-
erature, where vehicle en-route diversion is either completely allowed or forbidden,
this research work analyzes intermediate scenarios in detail. Here, due to the in-
creased stress level of the drivers that may lead to additional costs, the allowance of
an en-route diversion requires a minimum cost reduction. On the basis of extensive
computational results, this important trade-off is analyzed in detail for the first time.
Having known Francesco for a long time and intensively worked with him on
sophisticated real-time control concepts for vehicle routing, it is not at all surprising
to me that his PhD thesis is one in which I have taken great pleasure and interest
to read. He has always been very ambitious and zealous in trying to understand
research problems thoroughly and has proven to possess the necessary endurance
and scientific understanding to finally obtain the needed insights into the underly-
ing problem structure. Moreover, he reprograms the source codes in order to inte-
grate new ideas immediately. Therefore, after discussing new concepts and possible
workarounds late in the evening, you may receive an email early in the morning in-
forming you about their performance in recent computational tests. All in all, I can
summarize these fruitful years by just saying that it was such a pleasure for me to
be able to supervise him as a member of my team. I am convinced beyond doubt
that we will keep in touch and cooperate in further practical and scientific projects
in future.
Wuppertal, Germany Professor Stefan Bock
July 2012
Preface
xi
xii Preface
time control approach which centrally coordinates the transportation process during
its execution is proposed. This real-time control approach considers the concur-
rency of tour plan execution and tour plan adaptation. The transportation process is
adapted during its execution by solving individual problem instances utilizing a pro-
posed stage-based Tabu Search metaheuristic. Moreover, the mathematical model
used for representing the individual problem instances is introduced. The proposed
deterministic real-time control approach is then extended to a pro-active real-time
control approach which additionally makes use of stochastic knowledge about the
spatial and temporal occurrence of expected future customer requests. The utilized
stochastic knowledge is solely generated from past request information by a pro-
posed forecasting approach and no prescribed probability distributions are utilized.
Different quality criteria are considered in the proposed forecasting approach in or-
der to ensure a minimum defined quality of the generated stochastic knowledge. In
order to implement the pro-active real-time control approach, ways of handling and
integrating the stochastic knowledge into the solution process by using dummy cus-
tomers are proposed. According to the considered objective of minimizing customer
inconvenience, the stochastic knowledge is used to guide vehicles to request-likely
areas before real requests arrive there in order to service them quicker and thereby
attain a higher solution quality.
Comprehensive computational experiments are carried out on real-world request
data from a subsequent delivery of newspapers process (S REAL ) as well as on gen-
erated test scenarios (S GEN ). In all experiments, the effects of a variety of parameter
settings are evaluated in order to analyze the effects on the solution quality. In order
to identify scenarios in which the application of the proposed pro-active real-time
control approach achieves superior results compared to the proposed deterministic
real-time control approach, we introduce structural quality for classifying the value
of stochastic knowledge in a given routing problem scenario according to the avail-
able request data. Specifically, we derive the structural quality of a request data set
from two newly proposed criteria denoted as structural distortion and structural di-
versity. In addition to defining both criteria in detail, we also propose methods for
determining the structural distortion and the structural diversity of a given request
data set. Besides evaluating a proposed approach for determining structural distor-
tion on request data sets with different levels of structural distortion, we introduce a
two-dimensional structural diversity classification which is used to generate request
data sets of S GEN with significant differences in structural quality. Computational
results show that in scenarios with high levels of structural diversity, the proposed
pro-active real-time control approach is able to achieve significantly improved re-
sults compared to its proposed deterministic counterpart. Specifically, depending on
the evolution of customer inconvenience, improvements in the solution quality of up
to 26 % (linear2X customer inconvenience) and 47 % (quadratic customer incon-
venience) above the ones attained by the deterministic real-time control approach
can be achieved. Thanks to the proposed classification of structural diversity, dif-
ferences in results obtained among the tested scenarios become explainable. On
the S REAL request data, additional improvements of up to 7 % could be achieved by
using the pro-active real-time control approach. In order to explain the differences
Preface xiii
During my very exciting time as a research assistant from October 2006 to July 2012
at the Department of Business Computing and Operations Research (WINFOR) at
the University of Wuppertal in Germany, I gathered many terrific experiences in
science, practical research, and life. Motivated by the challenges in a real-world ap-
plication that we got to know from a company, I prepared my PhD thesis originally
entitled “Development and evaluation of pro-active real-time control and forecast-
ing approaches for the distribution of perishable goods utilizing past request infor-
mation to improve quality of customer service and reduce driver inconvenience” on
which this book is based.
My thesis was supervised by Professor Stefan Bock whom I have personally
known for more than 7 years now. While attending Stefan’s lectures during my
study time, I quickly realized that we both eagerly share the same enthusiasm for
developing and evaluating sophisticated algorithms and solution methods for real-
world problems. While writing my diploma thesis under his supervision, Stefan also
supported me with many creative ideas that greatly inspired me. Having known Ste-
fan as someone who is also always keen at discussing ideas and analyzing results in
detail, I decided that it would be a great idea to write my PhD thesis under his su-
pervision. During this time, I had the opportunity of gathering a lot of new expertise
as a teaching assistant, research assistant, project assistant, and project coordinator.
I would like to thank Stefan for insightfully supervising my thesis, always hav-
ing time for exchanging research ideas and also for being both a good lecturer and
friend. Thank you very much, Stefan, for all the possibilities you gave me during
my time writing my thesis. I have enjoyed working with you from the very first day.
One of the highlights during my PhD time was my three months’ visit to Mon-
treal in Canada. In addition to experiencing the beauty of Canada in winter time,
I also had the extraordinary possibility of jointly working on my thesis with Profes-
sor Michel Gendreau, one of the world’s most famous professors in transportation
science at the CIRRELT—the leading research institute for logistics and transporta-
tion. By turning my thesis into an international research project, I had a very en-
riching and fruitful collaboration with Michel. After my research time in Montreal,
I was allowed to give talks about our joint work with Michel at the international
xv
xvi Acknowledgments
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Categorization of the Considered Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Aims and Contributions of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3.1 Central Research Questions to Be Answered in This Book . 9
1.3.2 Contributions of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4 Outline of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems 15
2.1 General Task and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2 Representation of Requests and General Types of Routing Problems 18
2.3 Node-Based Routing Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3.1 The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3.2 The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP and CVRP) . . . . . . 20
2.3.3 The General Pickup and Delivery Problem (GPDP)
and Related Variants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3.4 Complexity of Node-Based Routing Problems . . . . . . . 25
2.3.5 Solution Methods for Node-Based Routing Problems . . . 27
2.4 Extensions to the Vehicle Routing Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.4.1 Time Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.4.2 Backhauls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.4.3 Simultaneous Pickup and Delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.4.4 Multi-Depot Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.4.5 Open Routing Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4.6 Vehicle Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4.7 Multiple Compartments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4.8 Multiple Trips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4.9 Time-Dependent Travel Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.4.10 Legal Driving Time Regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.4.11 Heterogeneous Fleet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.4.12 Objective Functions in Vehicle Routing Problems . . . . . 36
xvii
xviii Contents
xxiii
xxiv List of Figures
8.33 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.5, and 2.0 for RD = 1.00 and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
8.34 Results of the degree of structural diversity using the linear2X
customer inconvenience function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
8.35 Results of the degree of structural diversity using the quadratic
customer inconvenience function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
8.36 Managerial recommendations based on the dosd and S GEN
demanding a minimum improvement of 10 % . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
8.37 Managerial recommendations based on the dosd and S GEN
demanding a minimum improvement of 15 % . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
8.38 Managerial recommendations based on the dosd and S GEN
demanding a minimum improvement of 20 % . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
8.39 Results of limiting vehicle en-route diversion activities on
S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 with DCminλ = 2.0 using the linear2X
customer inconvenience function and a fleet size of 10 vehicles . . . . 257
8.40 Results of limiting vehicle en-route diversion activities on
S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 with DCminλ = 2.0 using the quadratic
customer inconvenience function and a fleet size of 10 vehicles . . . . 258
8.41 Impacts of assigning penalty costs to vehicle en-route diversion
activities on request response times attained by PROACTIVE10 on
S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 using 10 vehicles and the linear2X customer
inconvenience function grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . 260
8.42 Impacts of assigning penalty costs to vehicle en-route diversion
activities on request response times attained by PROACTIVE10 on
S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 using 10 vehicles and the quadratic customer
inconvenience function grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . 260
A.1 Market share of domestic and foreign trucks in Germany for domestic
and cross-border transportation from 1991 to 2010 . . . . . . . . . . . 281
B.1 All request data sets of S GEN with different levels of structural diversity 288
C.1 Request response times on S REAL using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience grouped by
intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
C.2 Request response times on S REAL using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience grouped by
intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
C.3 Request response times on S REAL using 10 vehicles and
DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, linear2X customer
inconvenience grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 290
C.4 Request response times on S REAL using 10 vehicles and
DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, quadratic customer
inconvenience grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 290
C.5 Request response times on S REAL using 12 vehicles and
DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, linear2X customer
inconvenience grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 290
List of Figures xxvii
C.21 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.50
and TD = 0.50 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 295
C.22 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.50
and TD = 0.50 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 296
C.23 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.75
and TD = 0.75 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 296
C.24 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.75
and TD = 0.75 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 296
C.25 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 1.00
and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 297
C.26 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 1.00
and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 297
C.27 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.00
and TD = 0.00 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 297
C.28 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.00
and TD = 0.00 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 298
C.29 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.25
and TD = 0.25 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 298
C.30 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.25
and TD = 0.25 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 298
C.31 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.50
and TD = 0.50 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 299
C.32 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.50
and TD = 0.50 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 299
C.33 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.75
and TD = 0.75 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 299
C.34 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.75
and TD = 0.75 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 300
C.35 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 1.00
and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 300
List of Figures xxix
C.36 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0,
1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 1.00
and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds . . . . . . . . . . . 300
List of Tables
xxxi
xxxii List of Tables
8.11 Evaluated response time thresholds and penalty costs included in the
objective function for vehicle en-route diversion activities depending
on the applied customer inconvenience function . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
8.12 Results for TIMELIMIT10 and PROACTIVE10 under different
penalty costs on S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 using 10 vehicles . . . . . . . 259
A.1 Development of transportation performance in billion ton-kilometers
in the EU-27 from 1995 to 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
A.2 Newspaper advertising expenditures in the United States of America
from 1950 to 2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
B.1 Resulting request arrival probabilities of selected request data sets in
S GEN with different levels of structural diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
List of Algorithms
xxxiii
Abbreviations
xxxv
xxxvi Abbreviations
∞ Infinity 21
A The set of arcs of digraph G 157
à The arcs of the road network R̃ 156
ai Region i used in the S GEN generation process 211
C The set of valid clusters used in the proposed forecasting 177
approach
C max Upper bound on the number of selectable clusters 178
Cnlatest The set of the n clusters of C which start latest 231
cis The binary parameter indicating if segment s belongs to 178
cluster ci
ciend The end time of cluster ci 179
ciendTL The temporal level at which cluster ci ends 179
cistart The start time of cluster ci 179
cistartTL The temporal level at which cluster ci starts 178
ctemp Temporal cluster examined during the cluster generation 173
process
avgTT
ctemp The average travel time from node nctemp to all requests 175
observed within the segments of ctemp over the last
nf working days
D Representation of the depot node in a tour plan 189
Dp The geographical position of the depot represented by the 157
node in the road network R̃ at which the depot is located
Dτ The set of pending requests at τ 153
DCλrem Dummy customer removal threshold 181
xli
xlii General RDOPG Symbols
DCmaxAvgTT The predefined maximum average travel time from nctemp 175
to all past requests observed within ctemp over the last nf
working days
DCmse The maximum spatial extension of a valid cluster 173
DCmte The maximum temporal extension of a valid cluster 173
minλ
DC The minimum rate parameter required for a valid cluster 173
DCminPQ The minimum demanded Poisson quality of a valid cluster 227
DCradiusTT Maximum predefined travel time radius of nctemp 175
DCse The spatial extension of all segments s of the set S 172
DCte The temporal extension of all segments s of the set S 172
dij The travel distance between locations i and j 22
dod The Degree of Dynamism 65
dosd The Degree of Structural Diversity 249
E Representation of the dummy end tour plan element E 189
edod The Effective Degree of Dynamism 66
edodtw The Effective Degree of Dynamism with Time Windows 66
G The digraph derived from the road network R̃ 157
H The solution approach (often a heuristic approach) 74
evaluated in the value of information
K The set of available vehicles, i.e., the available fleet 81
K The number of available vehicles, i.e., the fleet size 81
λ(ctemp ) The rate parameter of cluster ctemp 174
λ(ai , tj ) Request arrival rate parameter in region i in time slice j 212
λ(ci , τ + ) The remaining rate parameter of cluster ci at time 179
point τ +
λ(ps ) The rate parameter of the time-space Poisson process of 172
segment s
λ(tj ) Total request arrival rate parameter in time slice j 212
LNSexecMax Maximum number of executions of LNS performed within 195
one iteration
LNSexecMin Minimum number of executions of LNS performed within 195
one iteration
LNSreqRemF Maximum request removal factor applied in LNS 195
reqSelR
LNS The ratio of requests considered within an execution of 195
LNS
M Big number 178
m The length of each time period used to determine the dosd 250
MRELexecMax Maximum number of executions of MREL performed 194
within one iteration
MRELexecMin Minimum number of executions of MREL performed 194
within one iteration
General RDOPG Symbols xliii
xlvii
xlviii Symbols in Chap. 2
Ai , Bi The start time and the end time of the inner time window 138
of request i in the presented objective functions of
Fagerholt (2000) and Fagerholt (2001)
ai , bi The start time and the end time of the time window of 138
request i in the presented objective functions of Sexton
and Bodin (1985), Sexton and Choi (1986), and Dumas
et al. (1990)
D/G/m Queuing system with deterministic request arrivals, 112
general service time distribution, and m servers
(cf. Kendall 1953)
δt The length of the system state anticipation at time point t 143
in Ichoua et al. (2000)
δtk Amount of time that vehicle k should wait at its current 121
position in the approach of Ichoua (2001)
Ei , L i The start time and the end time of the outer time window 138
of request i in the presented objective functions of
Fagerholt (2000), Fagerholt (2001)
G/G/m Queuing system with general independently distributed 111
request interarrival times, general service time
distribution, and m servers (cf. Kendall 1953 and Tijms
2003, p. 341 et seq.)
H The considered planning horizon in Bent and van 128
Hentenryck (2004c)
H The end of the planning horizon in Bent and van 128
Hentenryck (2004c)
H The beginning of the planning horizon in Bent and van 128
Hentenryck (2004c)
li
lii Symbols in Chap. 4
In many real-world business to customer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) ap-
plications, unexpectedly occurring events may lead to unfavorable situations that
cause inconvenience or high costs for affected customers (or companies; in what
follows, we will use the term customers). For example, considering the case of a
newspaper subscription, a newspaper that has not been delivered in the morning
creates a high amount of inconvenience for the subscriber since reading newspapers
is a common habit in the daily lives of many people. Another example can be found
in manufacturing companies. If an important machine breaks down during the pro-
duction process, high outage costs occur. In order to provide a rough idea about
the dimension of a production outage, consider two of the major automobile brands
BMW (BMW Group) and Mercedes-Benz (Daimler Group) with a total number of
produced cars of 1,236,989 (BMW) and 1,312,456 (Mercedes-Benz) in 2010. One
hour of a production outage in all manufacturing facilities of these brands causes on
average a loss of 140 or 150 produced cars, or, according to their revenue, a financial
loss of over 6 million euros (cf. BMW Group 2011, Daimler Group 2011).
Due to the occurring inconvenience and costs in such situations, affected cus-
tomers want to have these situations quickly resolved. Therefore, customers de-
mand assistance from a specific service company which then resolves the situation
by delivering required goods with a high urgency. These goods may be material or
immaterial, e.g., spare parts, services, or a combination of both. It is assumed that
for the mentioned exceptional situations, a contract with a specific service com-
pany which is responsible for quickly resolving the situation has been negotiated
in advance. The key aspect in these situations is that, due to the high urgency, ser-
vice companies are forced to deliver the required goods to the affected customer
as quickly as possible. Specifically, since the occurrence of the unpleasant situation
has already caused a high amount of inconvenience to the customer, a delayed deliv-
ery of these goods causes additional significant customer inconvenience. Therefore,
this additional arising customer inconvenience decreases the value of the requested
goods with increasing time required for their delivery. Hence, we will refer to these
goods as perishable goods throughout this book. Their flow is always directed from
the service company to the customer so that the triggered service processes can be
1.1 Motivation
In B2C and B2B markets, customers expect high service quality from companies,
especially in urgent ad-hoc after-sales services (cf. Parasuraman et al. 1991). The
demand for such services is triggered by a failure in prior service or a failure in a
system for which a service contract has been established. Since customers mainly
rate service quality according to the customer inconvenience that they experience,
which depends on the resulting response times, these increased requirements force
service companies to deliver requested perishable goods under high time pressure.
Specifically, the longer an affected customer waits, the more inconvenience will oc-
cur. On the other hand, quick assistance opens up possibilities for service companies
to improve their image and expand their market position.
In what follows, three real-world examples which motivate the research on
RDOPG applications considered in this book are given. In B2C markets, a typi-
cal application is the subsequent delivery of newspapers. This process occurs when
a subscriber has not received his newspaper in the morning due to a delivery er-
ror (e.g., the delivery person forgot to deliver the newspaper), a delivery failure (e.g.,
drop-out of the corresponding delivery person), or a thievery. In each of these cases,
it is of particular importance to the newspaper publisher to compensate the sub-
scriber. This compensation can either be fulfilled by a voucher or a subsequent
delivery. Since a quick subsequent delivery allows market differentiation for the
4 1 Introduction
time
Response time
light, a sufficient number required for subsequent delivery activities during the day
can be loaded onto the vehicles at the beginning of the day. Therefore, each vehicle
can service any pending customer request. What makes the problem complex is that
newspaper subscribers are usually geographically dispersed so that new requests can
theoretically arise anywhere in the city. Another example of RDOPG applications
in B2C environments is quick road assistance in case of a car failure. This appli-
cation also belongs to the distribution of perishable goods since customers want to
receive quick help in case of problems with their cars. The main difference from the
previously described RDOPG application is that complex technical problems may
occur due to high-tech automobiles so that the service time has a significantly higher
degree of uncertainty.
In B2B markets one application of high economic relevance arises in the area of
repairman companies which provide specialized repair services for severe failures
occurring in production companies (cf. van de Klundert and Wormer 2010). Such
repair services have gained a much higher importance recently since manufacturers
have significantly changed their production habits over the last years in order to
deal with increased complexities in production processes and in order to reduce
costs (cf. Bock 2004, pp. 37–41):
• Decrease of the production depth: Due to technological advances, the com-
plexity of produced goods is steadily increasing. Manufacturers try to cope with
this increased complexity of their production processes by focusing on their core
competencies so that the in-house production depth can be decreased. Another
reason for reducing the production depth arises if required input goods can be
cost-efficiently procured. Possibilities of cheap procurement have arisen in recent
years due to a reduction in transportation costs. Specifically, since the 1990s, the
European transportation market has dramatically changed so that foreign compa-
nies performing truck-based transportation of goods at lower costs are permitted
to enter foreign markets (cf. Stumpf 1998, p. 19 et seq., Bock 2004, p. 30 et seq.).
As shown in Fig. A.1 (see Appendix A), their market share has steadily increased
leading to reductions in transportation costs.
• Just in Time concepts (JiT): In order to reduce storage costs for input goods,
manufacturers instruct component suppliers to deliver input goods just at the time
point when they are required (cf. Faria et al. 2010).
As mentioned above, these developments lead to leaner in-house production pro-
cesses and cost-savings. However, they also make production processes more prone
to errors. Due to the mentioned reductions in the production depth of individual
manufacturers, a significantly increasing demand for transportation services for de-
livering required input goods arises (see Table A.1 in Appendix A). Furthermore, the
mentioned increased complexity of many products due to technological advances
has led to another development:
• Special requirements and globalization: Raw materials and expertise knowl-
edge required for producing specific goods are only available in a limited number
of countries. However, since these goods are required in a variety of production
processes all over the world, strategic supply chain alliances formed by different
6 1 Introduction
Economic Need for Action As can be derived from the mentioned real-world
applications, the considered RDOPG applications are of high practical relevance.
In these applications, a quick reaction towards dynamically arriving customer de-
mands is the topmost priority so that customer loyalty is maintained and customer
1.2 Categorization of the Considered Problem 7
inconvenience is kept at a low level. Since operational costs incurred by travel activ-
ities of vehicles can be regarded as negligible compared to costs incurred by a late
response to customer requests, it is advantageous for companies to quickly service
pending customer requests even if this requires additional travel activities. Hence, as
mentioned above, it is advantageous to use a pro-active real-time control approach
so that a quicker response to customer requests is attained thereby yielding high
customer satisfaction and quality of service.
Tactical layer medium-term
2 Operative layer short-term
(0
immediate (online
Real-time control layer
during execution)
Fig. 1.2 Layers of the transportation process including the real-time control layer
As can be seen from these three layers, the described planning activities end
when the vehicles leave the depot in order to service assigned requests. However, in
dynamic routing problems such as the RDOPG applications considered in this book,
this is not sufficient since the majority of requests to be serviced only occur during
the execution of the transportation process.
In order to overcome this limitation, Bock (2004, p. 63) extends these three lay-
ers by introducing a fourth layer denoted as Real-time control layer. This layer
deals with the coordination of the transportation process in real-time parallel to its
execution. Figure 1.2 illustrates the four described layers and their time range. As
can be seen in this figure, the real-time control approaches which are developed in
this book are applied in the operative layer and real-time control layer since an ini-
tial solution is calculated before the execution of the transportation process which
is then adapted during its execution. As mentioned above, since in the considered
RDOPG applications the majority of customer requests only arrive during the exe-
cution of the transportation process, the activities of the real-time control layer are
the main focus of this book.
1.3 Aims and Contributions of the Book 9
Question 1: Does the integration of information about expected future request ar-
rivals into a deterministic real-time control approach, thus forming a pro-active real-
time control approach, allow for a significant improvement of the solution quality
by reducing customer inconvenience?
Question 2: If question 1 yields a positive result, under which criteria does this
apply? For example, what impact does the structural quality of existing request data
and the resulting stochastic knowledge which is generated on the basis of this re-
quest data have on the solution quality? Furthermore, which characteristics are suit-
able for measuring the structural quality of available request data?
Question 3: What impact does vehicle en-route diversion have on the solution qual-
ity? Since this increases driver inconvenience, is there a conflict between customer
inconvenience and driver inconvenience and does a useful trade-off between both
objectives exist?
The proposed models, approaches, and methods for pro-actively managing and con-
trolling the operative transportation processes of RDOPG applications can be char-
acterized by the following contributions:1
1 Some of the contributions of this thesis have also been published in concise form in Ferrucci et
al. (2013).
10 1 Introduction
In the literature, tour planning problems (or routing problems) are a vital research
area. As illustrated in Fig. 2.1, the number of journal publications on Vehicle Rout-
ing Problems (VRPs, see Sect. 2.3.2) has steadily increased over the years. This in-
creased scientific interest can be explained by several factors. For example, progress
in computational resources has opened new possibilities for modeling more complex
routing problems such as dynamic routing problems (see Sect. 2.5.3.2). Further-
more, new arising real-world applications provide inspiration for developing new
approaches for coordinating complex transportation processes.
In this chapter, a general introduction to tour planning problems as well as as-
pects of specific types of routing problems are given. Note that this chapter mainly
deals with routing problems which comprise characteristics of short-haul routing
problems, i.e., routing problems in which transportation activities are performed in
a bounded service area without transshipment during a planning horizon which usu-
ally has a length of up to one working day (see Sect. 1.2 and cf. Ghiani et al. 2004,
p. 247 et seq.). First, the general task and definitions of tour planning problems are
introduced. Afterwards, the representation of requests and general types of routing
problems, i.e., node-based and edge-based routing problems, are described. Since
the considered RDOPG applications can be modeled as variants of node-based rout-
ing problems, different node-based routing problems known in the literature and
characteristics of these, including solution complexity issues and existing solution
methods, are presented. Furthermore, since the considered RDOPG applications can
be modeled as a variant of the well-known Vehicle Routing Problem, extensions
to the Vehicle Routing Problem which can be found in the literature, e.g., specific
problem extensions or other objective functions, are presented. Afterwards, different
types of information revelation in routing problems are discussed by describing ap-
propriate classifications known in the literature. Moreover, a new classification with
regard to the type of information revelation and coordination of the transportation
process is proposed in order to describe specific attributes which are characteristic
of RDOPG applications.
Since RDOPG applications utilize a centralized coordination of the transporta-
tion process, characteristics of dynamic routing problems which utilize a centralized
500
447
450
Number of publications in journals
400
350
300
250
212
200
158
150
101
100
53
50
14 23
2 2 4
0
1954-1959 1960-1964 1965-1969 1970-1974 1975-1979 1980-1984 1985-1989 1990-1994 1995-1999 2000-2006
(7 years)
Year
Fig. 2.1 Number of journal publications with regard to VRPs (cf. Eksioglu et al. 2009)
r1 r2 r3 r4 r5 Requests
v1 v2 Vehicles
Sequencing of requests
r4 r2 r1 Tour of vehicle v1
r3 r5 Tour of vehicle v2
r4 r2
D r1 Tour of vehicle v1
r3 r5 Tour of vehicle v2
The first routing problem which was considered in the literature is the Traveling
Salesman Problem (TSP, cf. Dantzig et al. 1954). In the TSP, one salesman needs to
service a given set of R customer requests R = {1, . . . , R}, also denoted as cities.
In this routing problem, the set of requests is equal to the set of relevant locations V
in the digraph G = (V , A) which are defined by V = {1, . . . , R}. The salesman
is originally located at one of the customer requests and needs to service the re-
quests by visiting each customer location exactly once and finally returning to its
origin. Traveling from i to j , (i, j ) ∈ A = V × V produces costs denoted by cij . For
example, these costs can represent travel distances (see Sect. 2.4.12). The sought
optimal solution is a cost-minimal tour plan that represents the sequence in which
the requests are to be visited. Specifically, the solution is given by an assignment of
the binary variables X = {xij } (i, j ∈ V , i = j ) which are 1 if the salesman directly
travels from location i to j and 0 otherwise. The TSP is constituted by the following
mathematical model (cf. Laporte 1992b):
min z = cij · xij s.t. (2.1)
i∈V j ∈V
∀i ∈ V : xij = 1 (2.2)
j ∈V
∀i ∈ V : xj i = 1 (2.3)
j ∈V
∀S ⊂ V , 2 ≤ |S| ≤ R − 2: xij ≥ 1 (2.4)
i∈S j ∈{V \S}
5
6
8
7
The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) was introduced by Dantzig and Ramser (1959).
In its basic version, a set of requests has to be serviced by a fleet of homogeneous
vehicles. Each vehicle begins and ends its tour at the same location called the depot.
The VRP is used to model two different types of real-world business cases:
1. Goods that are loaded onto the vehicles at the depot are delivered to the cus-
tomers.
2. Goods that are located at customer locations are collected and transported to the
depot.
The uncapacitated VRP in which capacity constraints of the vehicles can be ne-
glected is equal to a multiple-salesman variant of the previously introduced TSP (m-
TSP, cf. Laporte and Nobert 1980 and Bektas 2006). In the VRP, R = {1, . . . , R}
defines the set of R customer requests. The set of nodes is defined by V = R ∪ {0},
i.e., customer requests and the depot denoted by node 0. Furthermore, the set K
represents the set of K uncapacitated vehicles K = {1, . . . , K}. As is the case in the
TSP, travel costs on the arcs are defined by cij with i, j ∈ V . Since each request
location is visited exactly once by a vehicle and since the utilized vehicles are ho-
mogeneous, it is not required to specify which tour belongs to which vehicle in the
solution. Hence, it is possible to model the VRP using only a two-index vehicle flow
formulation that uses O(R2 ) binary variables as is the case in the TSP (cf. Toth
and Vigo 2002, p. 30). In this formulation, the solution consists of a tour plan rep-
resented by a set of binary variables X = {xij } (i, j ∈ V , i = j ) equal to 1 if and
only if a vehicle directly travels from location i to location j . The VRP can then
be defined by the following mathematical model (cf. Laporte and Nobert 1980 and
Bektas 2006):
min z = cij · xij s.t. (2.5)
i∈V j ∈V
∀i ∈ R: xij = 1 (2.6)
j ∈{V \i}
∀i ∈ R: xj i = 1 (2.7)
j ∈{V \i}
x0i = K (2.8)
i∈R
2.3 Node-Based Routing Problems 21
xi0 = K (2.9)
i∈R
∀S ⊂ R, 2 ≤ |S| ≤ R − 2: xij ≥ 1 (2.10)
i∈S j ∈{V \S}
The objective function is given by (2.5). Constraints (2.6) and (2.7) ensure that
each customer request is visited and left exactly once. These constraints also de-
termine that exactly one vehicle services each request. Constraints (2.8) and (2.9)
make sure that each vehicle leaves the depot and returns to it exactly once. Finally,
constraints (2.10) eliminate subtours in the vehicle tours.
Constraints (2.11) are known as capacity-cut constraints (CCCs) and they ensure
both the elimination of subtours as well as vehicle capacity limits. The value r(S)
defines the minimum number of vehicles required to service all requests of set S.
It can be calculated by solving a bin-packing problem for determining the min-
imum number of required bins, each with capacity C, for loading the items of
set S (cf. Toth and Vigo 2002, p. 7) or by using a trivial lower bound given
i∈S di
by r(S) = C . Note that setting C = ∞ leads to constraints (2.10).
Despite requiring only the same amount of binary variables as in a TSP, the de-
scribed two-indexed formulation has certain drawbacks. Specifically, since no tour-
specific attributes can be integrated, e.g., individual vehicle arrival times at customer
requests, it does not allow to model more complex variants of the VRP. In order to
overcome this limitation, a three-index vehicle flow formulation is utilized (cf. Toth
and Vigo 2002, p. 15). In this formulation, let X = {xij k } be the set of binary vari-
ables that are 1 if and only if vehicle k ∈ K directly travels from location i to loca-
tion j (i, j ∈ V , i = j ). Furthermore, each binary variable of the set Y = {yik } is
1 if and only if vehicle k ∈ K visits location i ∈ V . Using this notation, the CVRP
can be modeled as follows:
min z = cij · xij k s.t. (2.12)
i∈V j ∈V k∈K
∀i ∈ R: yik = 1 (2.13)
k∈K
y0k = K (2.14)
k∈K
22 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
∀k ∈ K, i ∈ V : xij k = xj ik = yik (2.15)
j ∈V j ∈V
∀k ∈ K: di · yik ≤ C (2.16)
i∈V
∀S ⊆ R, h ∈ S, k ∈ K: xij k ≥ yhk (2.17)
i∈S j ∈S
/
Besides the objective function defined in (2.12), constraints (2.13) ensure that each
request is serviced by exactly one vehicle while constraints (2.14) make sure that
the depot belongs to the tour of each vehicle. Constraints (2.15) ensure the connect-
edness of the vehicle tours and by constraints (2.16) vehicle capacity restrictions are
taken into account. Subtours are eliminated by constraints (2.17).
In this section, we describe the General Pickup and Delivery Problem as well as two
variants denoted as the Pickup and Delivery Problem and the Dial-A-Ride Problem.
In contrast to the previously introduced routing problems, these problems consider
applications in which goods or passengers are picked up at specific locations and
need to be transported to other locations on the same tour. Hence, the vehicles are
empty at the start and at the end of their tour.
The General Pickup and Delivery Problem (GPDP) was described by Savelsbergh
and Sol (1995). In the GPDP, each customer request i ∈ R consists of a total cargo
of weight q̄i which needs to be transported from a set of pickup locations Ri+ to a set
of delivery locations Ri− which are individual for each customer request. Each loca-
tion j ∈ {Ri+ ∪ Ri− } has a weight qj assigned. Positive weights assigned to pickup
locations indicate the weight of goods that have to be picked up whereas negative
weights at delivery locations denote
the quantity
of goods that need to be delivered.
Moreover, it holds that q̄i = j ∈R + qj = − j ∈R − qj . The set R + = i∈R Ri+
i i
comprises all pickup locations and set R − = i∈R Ri− is composed of all delivery
locations of all requests. Additionally, set L = R + ∪ R − unifies all request locations.
Requests are serviced by a heterogeneous vehicle fleet K = {1, . . . , K}. Specifi-
cally, each vehicle k ∈ K has an individual capacity Qk , as well as an individual
start location + and end location k − . Furthermore, we define K + = +
k k∈K k ,
− − + −
K = k∈K k , and W = K ∪ K . Hence, in the corresponding digraph G, the
set of nodes V is defined as V = L ∪ W . For all i, j ∈ V , dij denotes the travel
2.3 Node-Based Routing Problems 23
distance, tij the travel time, and cij the costs for traveling from location i to j .
Note that service times required at request locations can be easily integrated into the
travel times, hence they are not considered explicitly.
The model of the GPDP is formulated using four types of variables. Each binary
decision variable zik (i ∈ R, k ∈ K) is equal to 1 if request i is assigned to vehicle k,
0 otherwise. Each binary decision variable xij k ((i, j ) ∈ (L × L) ∪ {(k + , j )|k ∈ K,
j ∈ L} ∪ {(j, k − )|j ∈ L, k ∈ K}, i = j ) is 1 if vehicle k directly travels from lo-
cation i to j , 0 otherwise. Each non-negative variable Di (i ∈ V ) specifies the de-
parture time at location i. Finally, each non-negative variable yi (i ∈ V ) denotes the
current load of the corresponding vehicle when it arrives at location i. The GPDP
can be modeled as follows:
∀k ∈ K: Dk + = 0 (2.23)
∀i ∈ R, p ∈ Ri+ , q ∈ Ri− : Dp ≤ Dq (2.24)
∀i, j ∈ V , k ∈ K: xij k = 1 ⇒ Di + tij ≤ Dj (2.25)
∀k ∈ K: yk + = 0 (2.26)
∀i ∈ R, l ∈ Ri+ ∪ Ri− : yl ≤ Qk · zik (2.27)
k∈K
∀i, j ∈ V , k ∈ K: xij k = 1 ⇒ yj = yi + qi (2.28)
The objective function is defined by (2.18). The authors state that depending on
the considered application, different functions can be used for f (x), for exam-
ple travel distance, travel time, or customer inconvenience. For details, we refer to
Savelsbergh and Sol (1995) and Sect. 2.4.12. Constraints (2.19) make sure that each
customer request is assigned to exactly one vehicle. Constraints (2.20) ensure that
a vehicle only visits and leaves customer request locations which are belonging to
requests assigned to the vehicle exactly once. Constraints (2.21) and (2.22) define
that each vehicle starts and ends its tour at the specified location. Constraints (2.23)
enforce that all vehicles start their tour at time point 0. Constraints (2.24) form
the request precedence constraints. Specifically, all pickup locations of a request
24 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
have to be serviced before its delivery locations are allowed to be serviced. Con-
straints (2.25) set the correct departure times at visited locations. Note that the less or
equal formulation allows the integration of time windows defined by [ei , li ], i ∈ L
and Di = max(Ai , ei ) with Ai denoting the arrival time of the servicing vehicle at
request location i. Hence, vehicles are allowed to wait at request locations if they
arrive there before ei . Constraints (2.26), (2.27), and (2.28) together form capacity
constraints.
In what follows, two special cases of the GPDP are presented. Note that the
previously described TSP and VRP also represent special cases of the GPDP.
The Pickup and Delivery Problem (PDP) is a special case of the GPDP. Specifically,
in the PDP, each request i ∈ R has exactly one pickup and one delivery location and
only one depot exists at which all vehicles start and end their tour. The PDP can be
formulated by using the model of the GPDP and setting its parameters to |W | = 1
and ∀i ∈ R: |Ri+ | = |Ri− | = 1 so that all vehicles have the same start and end posi-
tion and each request consists of exactly one pickup and one delivery location.
In Dial-A-Ride Problems (DARP, cf., e.g., Cordeau and Laporte 2003, 2007), appli-
cations which deal with the transportation of passengers are considered. The DARP
can be formulated by using the mathematical model of the GPDP and defining its
parameters as |W | = 1, ∀i ∈ R: |Ri+ | = |Ri− | = 1, and ∀i ∈ R: q̄i = 1 since each
request is assumed to consist of exactly one passenger. Common real-world ap-
plications of the DARP are taxi cab related problems or scheduled transportation
of patients to medical services. Since in the DARP people are transported instead
of goods, the objective function often includes specific passenger convenience at-
tributes. For example, the ride time of individual passengers can be restricted or
longer ride times penalized. According to Larsen (2000), the DARP exists in three
different versions:
• Many-to-One (MTO): In this variant of the DARP, only one destination to which
passengers are transported is considered. This case represents for example a real-
life application where different customers from a small residential area are col-
lected and afterwards transported to the same destination.
• Many-to-Few (MTF): In this case, the number of destinations is still relatively
small compared to the number of origins. In real-life applications, this case rep-
resents for example picking up customers from a residential area and transporting
them to different stops at a large shopping mall.
• Many-to-Many (MTM): This variant of the DARP can be considered as a taxi
cab system in which multiple individual passengers with different origins and
destinations have to be serviced.
2.3 Node-Based Routing Problems 25
More information on the DARP and its dynamic variants can be found in
Sects. 2.6.5.1 and 2.6.5.3.
Table 2.1 Comparison of several polynomial and exponential time complexity functions
(cf. Garey and Johnson 1979, p. 7)
Time complexity Problem size n
function 10 20 30 40 50 60
Node-based
routing problem
solution methods
Branch&Bound
Branch&Cut Decomposition Dynamic Construction Improvement
Branch&Price approaches programming heuristics heuristics
Branch&Cut&Price
Column Classic
Lagrangian
generation Simultaneous Successive improvement
relaxation
heuristics
Cluster first–
Parallel
route second
Fig. 2.4 Classification of different solution methods for node-based routing problems (in accor-
dance with Richter 2005, p. 42 and Aberle 2009, p. 543)
In order to solve node-based routing problems, various exact and heuristic solution
methods have been developed (cf., e.g., Laporte 1992a, Toth and Vigo 2002, Richter
2005, Cordeau et al. 2007b, and El-Sherbeny 2010). Figure 2.4 gives an overview of
several techniques developed for solving node-based routing problems exactly and
heuristically.
28 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
Despite their exponential computational time complexity in the worst case, exact
solution methods determine an optimal solution of a routing problem in finite time.
Using problem-specific characteristics, they can be used to derive an optimal solu-
tion for certain routing problems within reasonable time in the average case. More-
over, they usually provide information about the solution quality of the currently
best known solution during the solution process by calculating the current gap. This
gap denotes the maximum percentage deviation from the optimal objective function
value. Specifically, this gap is determined by calculating the deviation of the cur-
rently best known solution’s objective function value from the value of a calculated
lower bound of the considered problem (cf. Toth and Vigo 2002, p. 159).
One class of exact solution methods are Branch-and-Bound (B& B) and related
approaches which were first introduced by Land and Doig (1960) and extended by
Dakin (1965) for solving MIP problems using tree-search approaches. In general,
first a relaxed version of the MIP problem, e.g., its linear relaxation, is solved in
the root node of the search tree. If all variables in the solution of the relaxed prob-
lem are integer, the procedure stops. Otherwise, an integer variable xk is selected
whose value xk0 is continuous in the current relaxed solution. Using xk , two new
problems are constructed in the branching step by adding the restriction xk ≤ xk0
and xk ≥ xk0 , respectively, to the corresponding relaxed problem, thus creating
two new nodes, i.e., subproblems, in the search tree. By solving these relaxed ver-
sions of the original problem again, lower bounds for the optimal objective function
value of the original problem existing in the corresponding subtree of the current
node can be calculated. In doing so, it is known with certainty that no better solu-
tion can be found in the subtree belonging to this node if the lower bound of the
current node is higher than the objective function value of the currently best known
solution of the original problem. Hence, this subtree can be removed from further
consideration—this activity is called bounding. The aim of B&B approaches is to
find an optimal solution by examining as few nodes as possible in the search tree by
calculating tight lower bounds in each node so that subtrees of the search tree which
do not lead to an optimal solution can be early bounded (cf. Gass 2003, p. 313).
One of the first B&B related approaches for the TSP is the approach of Little et al.
(1963). In Branch-and-Cut (B& C) approaches, additional cutting planes are subse-
quently integrated in order to strengthen the relaxed problem solved in each node
in order to calculate better lower bounds. In Branch-and-Price (B&P, cf. Barnhart
et al. 1998), column generation is applied in each node with the same aim of achiev-
ing better lower bounds. For example, Savelsbergh and Sol (1998) propose a B&P
approach for solving a real-life GPDP. Furthermore, both techniques can be com-
bined to Branch-and-Cut-and-Price (B&C&P) approaches (cf., e.g., Fukasawa et al.
2006).
Lagrangian relaxation and column generation based approaches belong to the
class of decomposition approaches. Lagrangian relaxation (cf. Fisher 2004) is of-
ten used as a sub-procedure in order to determine good lower bounds for B&B and
related approaches. Specifically, by removing certain restrictions from the original
2.3 Node-Based Routing Problems 29
problem, a relaxed problem which can be solved significantly faster than the origi-
nal problem is created. Due to the removed restrictions, an optimal solution of the
relaxed problem is likely to be infeasible for the original problem. Nevertheless, it
represents a lower bound of the optimal solution’s objective function value of the
original problem. In order to reduce such infeasibilities, a violation of the removed
restrictions is penalized in the objective function of the relaxed problem. The chal-
lenge then is to find good Lagrange multipliers by which these penalties are inte-
grated into the objective function of the relaxed problem so that infeasibilities with
regard to the original problem are reduced as much as possible. In so doing, the
calculated lower bounds are tightened, i.e., they are closer to the objective function
value of an optimal solution of the original problem thereby gaining a higher quality.
In order to find such good Lagrange multipliers, subgradient methods are frequently
applied. One approach for computing tight lower bounds for the Symmetric Trav-
eling Salesman Problem (STSP) using Lagrangian relaxation is proposed by Held
and Karp (1970). In this approach, the problem is relaxed to a Minimum Spanning
Tree (MST) problem which can be solved in polynomial time (cf. Sedgewick 1983,
p. 413). Since the solution of an MST often disregards tour connectivity charac-
teristics of a TSP solution, this Lagrangian relaxation-based approach is used as a
sub-procedure of a B&B solution approach proposed in Held and Karp (1971).
Column generation (cf. Desaulniers et al. 2005) is another solution technique for
reducing the average computational effort which is required to compute an optimal
solution of combinatorial optimization problems. Starting with a small subset of
decision variables, duality costs of the generated optimal solution of this reduced
problem are examined in order to add further promising decision variables which
lead to better solutions. Column generation has been successfully applied to VRPs,
e.g., by Krumke et al. (2002) and Westphal and Krumke (2008). In these approaches,
binary decision variables are used to select tours out of a given set of available tours.
Specifically, set partitioning is utilized in order to construct feasible tour plans out
of the currently available tours. New tours, i.e., columns, are subsequently gener-
ated by extending the set of available tours with tours comprising more customer
requests. Since in the practical application considered in both approaches optimal
solutions often consist of tours with a low number of requests, optimal solutions
are often achieved within acceptable time limits. Note that this is one example of
efficiently utilizing the given problem structure in developing practically applicable
solution methods. More information about the mentioned approaches can be found
in Sect. 4.6 of the literature review.
Dynamic programming (cf. Bellman 1954, 2003) can be applied to combinato-
rial problems which can be modeled as multi-stage decision processes. The current
state of such a process is determined by a set of quantities denoted as state vari-
ables (cf. Bellman 1954, p. 503). The current stage is advanced by making deci-
sions which transform the state variables. According to Bellman (1954, p. 503), a
“sequence of decisions [is] called a policy, and a policy which is most advantageous
according to some preassigned criterion [is] called an optimal policy” which repre-
sents an optimal solution of the considered problem. Moreover, the author states the
principle of optimality as follows, “An optimal policy has the property that whatever
30 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
the initial state and initial decisions are, the remaining decisions must constitute an
optimal policy with regard to the state resulting from the first decisions” (Bellman
1954, p. 504). According to Lew and Mauch, this also means that optimal policies
have optimal subpolicies, “That this observation is valid follows from the observa-
tion that, if a policy has a subpolicy that is not optimal, then replacement of the
subpolicy by an optimal subpolicy would improve the original policy” (Lew and
Mauch 2007, p. 5). Hence, the optimal policy is determined by making optimal de-
cisions in the current stage by using the optimal decision of previous stages with
regard to the considered objective function. This procedure is also known in the
literature as the optimal substructure property. In each stage, the size of the consid-
ered subproblems is increased so that an optimal solution of the original problem is
finally calculated. One issue is that in NP-hard routing problems “the cardinality of
the state space is usually exponential in the problem size” (Desrochers et al. 1988).
If problem-specific characteristics can be used to limit the set of feasible subprob-
lems early, i.e., removing states which cannot be extended to a feasible solution of
the original problem, these characteristics can be utilized to reduce the number of
states required to be solved for calculating an optimal solution of the original prob-
lem. For instance, the approach of Dumas et al. (1995) for solving a TSP with hard
time windows uses different feasibility tests in order to detect infeasible states due
to time window violations. At each stage, the set of currently considered requests
is increased until finally an optimal policy for all requests of the original problem
can be derived using the calculated optimal policies for the previously considered
subproblems. If tight time windows are present in a problem instance, the approach
is able to significantly reduce the search space and hence also the computational
time required to solve the problem instance to optimality.
restrictions such as capacity constraints are used to divide the giant tour into indi-
vidual vehicle tours. In cluster first–route second heuristics, first the assignment of
requests to vehicles is performed by considering existing constraints. Afterwards,
a TSP is solved for each vehicle tour. Further information and examples of con-
struction heuristics can be found among others in Bräysy and Gendreau (2005a,
pp. 6–10).
Besides construction heuristics, improvement heuristics are used to modify an
existing solution in order to improve its solution quality. Improvement heuristics
can be categorized into classic improvement heuristics and metaheuristics. What
both types of heuristics have in common is that a given current solution is modified
using one or more neighborhood operators. The set of solutions that can currently
be generated by using a specific neighborhood operator is called the neighborhood
of the current solution. After evaluation of the neighborhood, one solution out of the
neighborhood is selected as the new current solution. Using this solution as the new
current solution, the described neighborhood search process starts all over again.
Classic improvement heuristics (cf. Bräysy and Gendreau 2005a) modify a given
tour plan until a local optimum is reached, i.e., until there exists no solution in the
neighborhood of the current solution with a better objective function value than
the current solution. Besides classic improvement heuristics, various metaheuristic
concepts for routing problems have been developed. The basic idea is to embed one
or more problem-dependent neighborhood operators into a problem-independent
framework which controls the application of these neighborhood operators. The
purpose of these frameworks is to overcome local optima in order to find better
solutions in other areas of the solution space. In Hoos and Stützle (2005), a large
variety of known metaheuristics is described where the most popular are: Vari-
able Neighborhood Descent (VND), Simulated Annealing (SA), Tabu Search (TS),
Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP), Ant Colony Optimiza-
tion (ACO), and Memetic Algorithms (MAs). Furthermore, metaheuristic solu-
tion approaches for routing problems are also based on Genetic Algorithms (GAs,
cf. Mitchell 1998) and Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS, cf. Hansen and Mlade-
novic 2001). Another sophisticated solution technique is Large Neighborhood
Search (LNS) which has for example been applied to routing problems by Bent and
van Hentenryck (2004a). Ropke and Pisinger (2006) utilize LNS in a modified ver-
sion called Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search (ALNS). Further information on
metaheuristics for routing problems can be found in Toth and Vigo (2002), Cordeau
et al. (2005), Bräysy and Gendreau (2005b), Gendreau et al. (2006), and Gendreau
et al. (2008). The Tabu Search metaheuristic developed and utilized in the real-time
control approaches will be presented in Chap. 7 of this book.
The solution of a routing problem can be regarded as a graph in which cus-
tomer requests and the depot represent the nodes of the graph and in which the
arcs represent the routes, i.e., the vehicle travel activities between the relevant lo-
cations. In doing so, neighborhood operators which are applied in improvement
heuristics can be subdivided into arc-exchanging and node-exchanging operators.
In arc-exchanging operators, two or more arcs which, depending on the operator,
belong to the same vehicle tour or to different tours, are exchanged so that one or
32 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
more customer requests are indirectly moved to a different position in the tour plan.
In contrast, node-exchanging operators directly move customer requests to another
position in the same tour or in another tour. The following neighborhood operators
are frequently applied in improvement heuristics for VRPs:
• 2-opt and 3-opt operator: These operators introduced by Lin (1965) exchange
two or three arcs within the same tour.
• Or-opt operator: This operator proposed by Or (1976) exchanges three arcs in
the same tour in order to move a sequence of customer requests to another po-
sition on the same tour while preserving the sequence in which the exchanged
customers are serviced.
• 2-opt* operator: This operator by Potvin and Rousseau (1995) exchanges the
latter part of two different tours while preserving the sequence of the requests in
the exchanged tour parts.
• Relocate, exchange, and cross operator: Savelsbergh (1992) introduces these
three node-exchanging operators. The relocate operator moves one customer to
another tour while the exchange operator swaps two customers in two different
tours preserving their positions in the tours. The cross operator works similar
to 2-opt*.
• CROSS-exchange operator: Badeau et al. (1997) propose the CROSS-exchange
operator. It considers two tours in which a part of each tour is exchanged. Both
exchanged tour parts can have a different number of customers. Since one part
can also consist of zero customers, it is possible to move one or more customers
from one tour to another thereby generalizing other neighborhood operators such
as the previously mentioned relocate, exchange, Or-Opt, and 2-opt* operator.
The neighborhood operators which are utilized in the proposed Tabu Search
metaheuristic will be presented in Sect. 7.2.
In VRPs with time windows, a time window [rie , ril ] is assigned to each customer
request i ∈ R. We denote the point in time when the servicing vehicle arrives at
2.4 Extensions to the Vehicle Routing Problem 33
request i by yis . In general, two types of time windows exist. In case of hard time
windows, service of a request is required to start before the end of the time win-
dow, i.e., ∀i ∈ R: yis ≤ ril . Tour plans which do not fulfill these hard time window
restrictions are infeasible. If a vehicle arrives at the location of request i before rie , it
is usually allowed to wait there. This problem variant is called the Vehicle Routing
Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW, cf. Toth and Vigo 2002, p. 8). The sec-
ond variant is the Vehicle Routing Problem with Soft Time Windows (VRPSTW,
cf. Toth and Vigo 2002, p. 179). In the VRPSTW, service of requests is allowed
to be performed after the end of the time window but at the expense of additional
penalty costs. These penalty costs may either be fixed, i.e., occurring for each late
serviced request regardless of the length of the lateness, variable, i.e., depending on
the length of the lateness, or a combination of both. More information on fixed and
variable penalty costs are given in Sect. 2.4.12.
Another variant is the Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Time Windows in
which each request i can be serviced during different time windows (cf. Toth and
Vigo 2002, p. 179). A further variant of the VRPTW is the Vehicle Routing Problem
with Time Deadlines (VRPTD, cf. Thangiah et al. 1993), where each request i can
be serviced at any point in time up to a given latest time point denoted by ril . This
variant can be modeled using a VRPTW and setting rie = 0 for all requests i ∈ R.
2.4.2 Backhauls
In the Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls (VRPB), both mentioned real-world
business cases of VRPs dealing with delivering and collecting goods at customer
locations are combined. For this purpose, the set of requests is split into the ones
requiring linehauling (delivering goods) and those that require backhauling (col-
lecting goods). In VRPB problems, usually all linehaul customer requests must be
serviced before the backhaul requests (cf. Toth and Vigo 2002, p. 9, Parragh et al.
2008).
The Vehicle Routing Problem with Simultaneous Pickup and Delivery (VRPSPD)
is an extension of the VRPB. Specifically, in this problem, backhaul requests can
already be collected by a vehicle before it has delivered all linehaul requests (cf. Toth
and Vigo 2002, p. 10).
In the Multi-Depot Vehicle Routing Problem (MDVRP, cf. Golden et al. 2008,
p. 164), dispatchable vehicles are located at different depots. There may be special
34 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
restrictions for assigning requests to vehicles. Specifically, certain requests may re-
quire service by a vehicle from a specific depot, for example if goods to be delivered
are only available at certain depots.
In the Open Vehicle Routing Problem (OVRP), vehicles do not need to return to their
depot after completing their assigned tour. This problem is for example considered
in the work of Tarantilis et al. (2004).
While in VRPs decisions only comprise the assignment and sequencing of requests
to vehicles, in Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problems (VRSP) scheduling deci-
sions of vehicles are additionally considered (cf. Bodin and Golden 1981, Solomon
1987, and Mitrovic-Minic et al. 2004). Specifically, vehicles leave the depot and
customer locations only at specified time points. Vehicle scheduling decisions are
useful for different purposes. For example, in order to consider law-regulated driv-
ing time restrictions (cf. Brandão and Mercer 1997 and Sect. 2.4.10), vehicles can
be instructed to wait for a certain amount of time at a specified request location.
Furthermore, this allows the implementation of waiting strategies (see Sect. 4.3).
Note that the integration of scheduling significantly increases the decision space so
that the problem complexity is increased.
In the VRP variant denoted as the Multiple Compartment Vehicle Routing Prob-
lem (MCVRP, cf. Muyldermans and Pang 2010), vehicles have different storage
areas for goods. This is important for transporting goods on the same vehicle which
must not be mixed, e.g., different liquids.
In Multiple Trip Vehicle Routing Problems, vehicles can return to the depot during
the planning horizon and set for another trip afterwards. Such intermediate returns
to the depot are useful if distribution problems are considered in which the load
of all requests assigned to a vehicle’s tour exceeds its capacity. Hence, the vehicle
2.4 Extensions to the Vehicle Routing Problem 35
can replenish its capacity and continue to service further requests. Furthermore,
vehicle scheduling decisions may become relevant, e.g., for determining when the
vehicle sets for its next trip. For example, Brandão and Mercer (1997) consider a
Multiple Trip Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problem (MTVRSP) in which legal
time breaks and maximum legal driving times per day are additionally considered.
In order to comply with legal regulations, different VRP approaches consider le-
gal driving time regulations (cf. Brandão and Mercer 1997 and Ferrucci 2006,
pp. 38–42). Depending on the country, these regulations consist of a maximum driv-
ing time per work shift or legal time breaks required after a certain driving time has
been completed.
In the Heterogeneous Vehicle Routing Problem (HVRP), the available vehicles are
divided into different classes. Differences between vehicle classes consist for ex-
ample of different fixed and variable operational costs as well as individual loading
capacities (cf. Gendreau et al. 1999b and Tarantilis and Kiranoudis 2007) and dif-
ferent travel speeds (cf. Ferrucci 2006, pp. 36–37).
36 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
As mentioned in Sect. 2.3.3, different objective functions are pursued in VRPs ac-
cording to the considered application. In what follows, we present different types of
objective functions. Note that these individual objectives can also be combined by
utilizing a weighted sum of different objective functions.
This objective function aims at minimizing the number of vehicles which are uti-
lized to service the requests. This aim is often combined with the minimization of
the total travel distance (cf., e.g., Homberger and Gehring 2005) or the total travel
time (cf., e.g., Hvattum et al. 2006).
This objective pursues the minimization of the total time utilized by all vehicles in
order to service the requests (cf. Savelsbergh 1992). If time windows are present,
vehicle scheduling aspects become relevant.
This objective function aims at minimizing the time point at which the last vehicle
returns to the depot after all requests have been serviced. Note that if in the pre-
viously described objective all vehicles have to depart from the depot directly at
the beginning of the execution of the transportation process, this and the previous
objective become equal (cf. Savelsbergh 1992).
In VRPSTWs, costs occurring for late serviced requests can be classified into fixed
and variable lateness costs. We denote the length of the lateness that has occurred
at request i by rilt = max(0, yis − ril ) where, as mentioned above, yis describes the
2.4 Extensions to the Vehicle Routing Problem 37
This objective function is related to the previously presented one, but instead of soft
time windows, hard time windows exist. Hence, late service of a customer is not
allowed. Instead, if it holds that yis > ril , request i is removed from the system and
is counted as an unserviced customer. Hence, in order to minimize the number of
unserviced customers, it is the primary objective to service as many customers as
possible within their time windows. In general, this objective can be modeled by
fixed penalty costs which have been introduced in the previous section. However, it
is advisable to provide more information to the solution method about how urgent
a customer is to the solution method, i.e., how far away customer request i is still
from its last allowed time point for start of service denoted by ril . The utilization of
such additional information has also been addressed in van de Klundert and Wormer
(2010). In their work, the authors state that just using fixed penalty costs in order
to fulfill maximum request response times defined by SLAs (which is related to
the considered objective in this book, see also Sect. 1.1) is not advisable. By inte-
grating appropriate additional information into the objective function, the solution
method can precisely discriminate between different solutions in which all customer
requests are feasibly serviced within their time windows. Therefore, the solution
method is able to identify solutions in which requests are currently scheduled for
service with larger buffer times before the end of their time windows. This is also
advantageous in the considered RDOPG applications since it increases the possibil-
ities for integrating future arriving requests into the tour plan within the maximum
allowed response time so that no penalty costs occur (see also Sect. 5.3.2.4).
In all of the previously described routing problems, the solution is obtained by solv-
ing the corresponding model on basis of problem data which is given for the pa-
rameters of the model. In what follows, we define that this data is derived from
the relevant information of the corresponding routing problem. Depending on the
considered routing problem, the problem data is either constant or changes during
the transportation process of the considered routing problem. Moreover, we define
that the problem data changes during the execution of the transportation process if
during its execution different parameter values are present in the model. Depend-
ing on the type of relevant information, such changes in the problem data may be
known in advance with certainty or can contain uncertainty. Moreover, if changes in
the relevant information are not known with certainty, stochastic knowledge about
expected changes may be available. This is explained in detail in Sect. 2.5.3.
Basically, the problem data of a routing problem consists of the following types
of information:
• Customer requests: Information about customer requests comprises the request
location, the demand, start and end times of time windows, and fixed as well as
variable penalty costs.
• Vehicles: In order to efficiently assign the requests to vehicles according to the
given objective, information about the available fleet size and properties of the
vehicles is required.
• Travel times and travel distances: This type of information is provided by the
digraph G for all connections between the considered relevant locations (see
Sect. 2.2).
In this section, we describe differences in the revelation of relevant information
in vehicle routing problems, i.e., how and when changes in the relevant information
occur in the considered routing problem during the execution of its transportation
process. Furthermore, we present approaches in the literature for characterizing rel-
evant information and distinguishing between static and dynamic routing problems.
2.5 Information Revelation in Routing Problems 39
Initial tour plan Tour plan adaptation during tour plan execution
generation before (depending on the type of routing problem)
tour plan execution
Relevant information Relevant information may change (depending on the problem type)
does not change
time
Beginning of the transportation process
Fig. 2.5 General process of tour plan generation and adaptation before and during the execution
of the transportation process
Based on the results of these approaches, a unified approach for classifying rout-
ing problems with regard to characteristics and processing of relevant information,
which are both important for RDOPG applications, in routing problems is proposed.
Using this approach, different types of VRPs known in the literature are presented
in detail.
In Psaraftis (1995), the author introduces four different criteria for classifying rele-
vant information in routing problems:
• Evolution of information: In static routing problems, the relevant information
remains constant while in dynamic routing problems the relevant information
changes during the execution of the transportation process. More information
about differences in static and dynamic routing problems is given in the next
section.
• Quality of information (about future events): Information available about fu-
ture events is of one of four types; future events can either be known with cer-
tainty (deterministic), known with uncertainty (forecasted), follow prescribed
probability distributions (probabilistic information), or unknown (no informa-
tion).
• Availability of information: Changes which occur in the relevant information
during the transportation process can either be locally or globally available. One
example of a local information availability is if a driver is informed of the actual
amount of goods that the current customer requires only when the correspond-
ing customer location is reached and there is no possibility of informing other
vehicles or a central dispatching center about this change. In contrast, in rout-
ing problems where such changes are globally available, they are recorded in a
central system.
• Processing of information: If a centralized processing of relevant information
is applied, all changes in the relevant information are recorded and handled by a
central dispatching center. In a decentralized processing, changes in the relevant
information are autonomously handled by the vehicles.
1. Time dimension is essential: In a static routing problem the current time di-
mension during the execution of the transportation process is not important
since, as stated above, static routing problems only consider the generation of
the initial tour plan before the execution of the transportation process and the
relevant information does not change during its execution. In dynamic rout-
ing problems, time is essential for several reasons. First, since changes in the
relevant information often occur unexpectedly during the execution of the trans-
portation process, depending on the current time, vehicles have a different posi-
tion and status which needs to be considered in order to efficiently adapt the tour
plan according to occurring changes in the relevant information. Furthermore,
during the adaptation of the tour plan according to the new system situation,
time elapses in the transportation process. Hence, further changes in the system
situation that occur during this adaptation need to be carefully considered (see
also Sects. 2.5.3.2 and 4.7.4).
2. Problem may be open-ended: In contrast to static routing problems, in some
dynamic routing problems the length of the planning horizon is not determined
in advance.
3. Future information may be imprecise or unknown: As mentioned above,
in static routing problems all relevant information is known in advance with
certainty. In dynamic routing problems, future events are only known with un-
certainty or are not known at all before the execution of the transportation pro-
cess.
4. Near-term events are more important: In static applications where all rele-
vant information is known with certainty, no drawbacks exist in directly com-
mitting vehicles to decisions which are only taking place in the far future. For
example, a vehicle can be sent to an isolated customer request without negative
consequences, even if it needs to wait there for a long time until this request can
be serviced. In contrast, in dynamic routing problems, postponing far future de-
cisions can be advantageous in order to make better decisions later when more
relevant information is available, for example due to additional requests which
have arrived intermediately.
5. Information update mechanisms are essential: Since in static problems
the relevant information does not change, no tour plan adaptations are re-
quired during the transportation process. In dynamic routing problems, it is
necessary to integrate occurring relevant information updates into the real-
time control approach. Specifically, ongoing processes, e.g., requests currently
being serviced or vehicle movements being performed, have to be consid-
ered in tour plan adaptations. Moreover, in order to inform vehicles about
new decisions made during an adaptation, the existence of a bidirectional
communication between the vehicles and the dispatching center is impor-
tant.
6. Resequencing and reassignment decisions may be warranted: In dynamic
routing problems, changes in the relevant information may render the currently
executed tour plan infeasible so that it needs to be adapted. During this adap-
tation, existing requests may be required to be resequenced or reassigned to
42 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
requests without significant delays. Psaraftis states that in this case, classic so-
lution approaches for routing problems result in a poor system performance
so that the utilization of methods from the area of queueing theory is recom-
mendable. Bertsimas and van Ryzin evaluate the efficiency of different request
dispatching strategies in light and heavy traffic scenarios by using queueing the-
ory insights in their approaches. Their results will be discussed in the literature
review in Sect. 4.5.1.
Besides Psaraftis’ twelve aspects, Bianchi (2000) proposes another approach to
distinguish between static and dynamic routing problems. In this approach, a routing
problem (or, in general, an optimization problem) is classified as dynamic if it is
uncertain how parts of the relevant information are revealed or updated during the
execution of the transportation process. Hence, impacts of occurring changes in the
problem data are not always known with certainty. As mentioned above, if the tour
plan currently in execution is required to be adapted, this has to be carried out while
time in the system elapses so that the solution process is concurrently executed
with occurring changes in the relevant information. Since it is not sufficient to only
determine an initial solution once, only a strategy or policy, i.e., a solution method,
which is used to solve the problem during the execution of the transportation process
can be specified in advance. If this is not the case, a routing problem is deemed not
dynamic according to this classification. Therefore, routing problems in which one
of the following two characteristics is present are not dynamic according to the
author:
• The problem data changes over time, but these changes are known with certainty
in the relevant information.
• The relevant information is constant, but some parts of it are unknown at the
beginning of the execution of the transportation process and are only revealed
during its execution, for example when a vehicle reaches a customer location.
Moreover, for all of these uncertain parts, prescribed probabilistic information is
given as stochastic knowledge in advance. Hence, an a priori solution which is
only changed in minor ways during the execution of the transportation process
can be determined in advance (see Sect. 2.5.3.2.1).
Another approach for characterizing static and dynamic routing problems is pro-
posed in the work of Ghiani et al. (2003). The authors state that a routing problem is
static if all types of its relevant information are independent of the current time dur-
ing the execution of the transportation process. If this is not the case, then the routing
problem is dynamic. Moreover, if all changes in the relevant information which oc-
cur during the execution of the transportation process are known in advance with
certainty, the routing problem is called deterministic, otherwise stochastic. Conse-
quently, four types of routing problems arise in this characterization approach:
• In static deterministic routing problems, no changes in the relevant information
occur during the execution of the transportation process so that the problem data is
constant. Hence, only the generation of the initial tour plan before the execution
of the transportation process is considered in problems of this type. Problems
44 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
of this type are also denoted as static routing problems which are presented in
Sect. 2.5.3.1.1.
• In static stochastic routing problems, some parts of the relevant information are
only known with uncertainty before the execution of the transportation process.
This uncertain relevant information often belongs to customer attributes, e.g.,
demand of customers or whether customers are required to be serviced at all.
Characteristic for these types of routing problems is that the uncertain relevant
information is given by random variables that follow prescribed probability dis-
tributions which makes the problem stochastic. Moreover, the prescribed prob-
ability distributions are often available as stochastic knowledge before the ex-
ecution of the transportation process. Since the values of these random vari-
ables do not change during the execution of the transportation process, the prob-
lem is characterized as static. The actual values of the uncertain relevant in-
formation are revealed during the execution of the transportation process. For
example, when a vehicle reaches a customer location, its actual demand is re-
vealed. Hence, the problem data changes in this type of problem, but these
changes can be considered in the initial tour plan generation due to the avail-
able stochastic knowledge. Routing problems of this type are known in the liter-
ature as variants of the Stochastic Vehicle Routing Problem which is described in
Sect. 2.5.3.2.1.
• In dynamic deterministic routing problems, the relevant information remains con-
stant, but the problem data changes over time during the execution of the trans-
portation process. Characteristic of such routing problems is that the point in time
when these changes in the problem data happen as well as their effects are known
in advance with certainty. For example, routing problems in which travel times
change during the planning horizon according to a function which is known in
advance belong to this problem type. Routing problems of this type are described
in Sect. 2.5.3.1.2.
• In dynamic stochastic routing problems, the relevant information changes at un-
known time points during the execution of the transportation process when dy-
namic events occur. Moreover, no knowledge about these dynamic events is avail-
able. Such problems are described in Sect. 2.5.3.2.2.
Pillac et al. (2010) propose an approach similar to the previous one. Specifi-
cally, static routing problems are classified as described in Ghiani et al. (2003).
In dynamic routing problems, relevant information changes during the execution
of the transportation process and these changes always inhibit uncertainty. Specif-
ically, dynamic deterministic routing problems are characterized by the fact that
no information about future changes in relevant information is available. Hence,
this group of routing problems is equal to the dynamic stochastic problems in
the aforementioned classification. In contrast, this classification regards dynamic
stochastic routing problems as real-time routing problems in which some stochastic
knowledge about future events is available. Problems of this type are presented in
Sect. 2.5.3.2.2.
2.5 Information Revelation in Routing Problems 45
In Powell et al. (1995), the authors do not only deal with the type of changes of the
problem data, which they denote as the problem, during the transportation process,
but they also categorize the approach utilized to solve the given problem. Specif-
ically, besides a model which is used to represent the problem in the solution ap-
proach, the application defines the way in which the approach solves the model
during the transportation process. Hence, in a given routing application, the prob-
lem is predetermined while the model and the application are approach-dependent.
In the proposed categorization, the authors distinguish each of these three items
according to the type of dynamism with which each of them exists in a given routing
problem and the applied solution approach:
• Dynamism of the problem: The problem is dynamic if one or more of its param-
eters change over time during the execution of the transportation process accord-
ing to functions of time which may be known or unknown before its execution.
Two types of dynamic problems are distinguished by the authors: Problems with
dynamic data and problems with time-dependent data. In the first type, the rele-
vant information and hence the problem changes unexpectedly, i.e., the mentioned
functions are unknown. For instance, this includes dynamically arriving requests,
unexpected changes in traffic conditions, or unexpected changes of vehicles or
driver statuses. In dynamic problems with time-dependent data, changes in the
problem occur deterministically according to functions which are known in the
relevant information before the execution of the transportation process.
• Dynamism of the model: The model represents the problem in a specific solu-
tion approach. It is dynamic if it explicitly considers changes in the problem dur-
ing the execution of the transportation process whereas a static model does not
consider any occurring changes in the problem. Furthermore, models are subdi-
vided into deterministic and stochastic models so that four types of models exist.
Specifically, a deterministic static model can be used to model static routing prob-
lems in which the relevant information does not change and also the problem is
static. A stochastic static model represents a routing problem in which uncertain
parts in the relevant information are considered by generating a robust tour plan
with regard to expected changes in the problem that occur according to available
probability distributions. By using a deterministic dynamic model, changes which
occur in the problem over time are considered but the model does not consider
the dynamic structure of the problem. Specifically, when solving the model, the
possible occurrence of further changes in the problem is not considered so that
only the currently deterministically known parts of the relevant information are
considered, even in situations where stochastic knowledge is available. In con-
trast, in stochastic dynamic models, decisions are made on the basis of relevant
information known with certainty and do additionally consider available stochas-
tic knowledge about expected future events.
• Dynamism of the application: The application defines how the solution ap-
proach is applied in order to solve the model. The application is dynamic if the
46 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
and expected changes in the traffic conditions are considered. In this book, ap-
proaches of this type are denoted as pro-active real-time control approaches (see
Sect. 2.5.3.2.2).
In the previous section, different approaches in the literature for characterizing rel-
evant information and different types of routing problems were described. Based
on the results of these approaches, in particular those by Powell et al. (1995) and
Psaraftis (1995), we present a unified approach for classifying routing problems
according to RDOPG-specific attributes in this section. This approach gives a struc-
tured overview about the type of relevant information, i.e., constant or changing, and
considers the availability and processing of occurring changes in the relevant infor-
mation in detail. Moreover, in case of changing relevant information, it describes
the type of stochastic knowledge available, if any.
The proposed classification is illustrated in Fig. 2.6. The resulting items of this
classification represent individual classes of routing problems. According to the
main distinction concerning whether the relevant information is constant or com-
prises uncertain changes during the transportation process, the type of problem data
denoted as the problem is identified. If changing relevant information exists, the
availability of resulting changes in the problem is presented. Moreover, the pro-
posed classification considers in which way the problem is processed in order to
coordinate the transportation process. Finally, depending on the quality of informa-
tion, i.e., the type of stochastic knowledge which is available about expected future
events, appropriate variants of VRPs known in the literature are described. In what
follows, characteristics for each of these classes and general solution approaches are
presented.
Relevant Example
information is variant
globally available
and given Deterministic
by constant Centralized knowledge
Constant
relevant
parameters
/ Static problem, processing
/ Centralized available
/ VRP
no changes coordination
information K
KK
G KK M: deterministic static
KK
A: static
KK
K
Relevant information KK
%
is globally available
Dynamic Centralized
Deterministic
knowledge
Relevant information
and given by known
does not change
functions of time problem, processing
/ Centralized available
/ TDVRP
time-dependent coordination
data M: deterministic static
A: static
Prescribed
stochastic
Dynamic Decentralized knowledge
Type of
relevant
problem, local processing
/Decentralized / SVRP
available
knowledge of coordination
information
-- @ F >>
dynamic data >> M: stochastic static
--
E >>
>>
A: static
--
>>
--
>>
Local availability of
-- relevant information
changes, no bidirectional
-- communication available
--
Decentralized Agent-based
Relevant information -
--
processing
--
--
--
Partly local, partly
global availability
of relevant Dynamic Mixed Mixture of
Changing
relevant
information changes
/ problem, processing
/ Mixed / decentralized
mixed coordination and centralized
information knowledge of A approaches
66
66 dynamic data
66
66
66
66 8 DVRP
66 No stochastic
knowledge available
66
66 M: deterministic dynamic
Global availability of 66 A: dynamic
relevant information 66 Mixed processing
changes, bidirectional 66
communication available
66
Prescribed
stochastic
Dynamic Centralized knowledge
problem, processing
/ Centralized available / DSVRP
global coordination
<<
knowledge of << M: stochastic dynamic
dynamic data << A: dynamic
<<
<<
Stochastic knowledge <
<
<<
can be generated
<<
from past request
information <
DFSVRP
N.B.:
M denotes the type of model used in an approach, M: stochastic dynamic
A denotes the type of application used in an approach (see Section 2.5.2.3). A: dynamic
Fig. 2.6 A new classification of routing problems according to properties and processing of rele-
vant information
2.5 Information Revelation in Routing Problems 49
Initial tour plan No tour plan adaptation during tour plan execution
generation before
tour plan execution
Relevant information Relevant information does not change
does not change
time
Beginning of the transportation process
Fig. 2.7 The transportation process of routing problems with constant relevant information
As illustrated in the classification in Fig. 2.6, two types of routing problems with
constant relevant information exist. In Powell et al. (1995), they are distinguished
according to the dynamism of the problem, i.e., whether the problem is static or
dynamic.
In routing problems of this class, the existing problem data changes during the exe-
cution of the transportation process. However, since these changes occur according
to known functions of time which are available in the relevant information before
the execution of the transportation process and since the relevant information does
not change, all problem data changes are deterministically known. Therefore, a dy-
namic problem with time-dependent data is present. An example routing problem
is the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time-Dependent Travel Times (TDVRP, see
Sect. 2.4.9).
In addition to the previously discussed routing problems with constant relevant in-
formation, there are routing problems in which the relevant information changes
during the execution of the transportation process. What is important is that these
changes cannot be predicted with certainty. Hence, a dynamic problem with dy-
namic data in which changes in the problem data cannot be predicted with certainty
is present. According to Psaraftis, the evolution of information is dynamic and the
quality of information about future events is not deterministic and depends on the
type of available stochastic knowledge.
50 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
Initial tour plan Adaptation of individual tours during tour plan execution
generation before in case of tour failures by applying an appropriate recourse action
tour plan execution
Relevant information Relevant information does not change, but some parts are only revealed during
does not change the execution of the transportation process
time
Beginning of the transportation process
represented by random variables. Their values are unknown in the initial tour plan
generation but do not change during the execution of the transportation process.
They are revealed to individual vehicles during the transportation process which is
discussed in detail below. Moreover, these random variables follow prescribed prob-
ability distributions which are known and can be utilized as stochastic knowledge
during the initial tour plan generation. With regard to the classification of Psaraftis
(1995), the quality of information about future events follows prescribed probability
distributions (probabilistic information). Hence, the unknown parts of the relevant
information are given by distributions known to be correct with certainty (cf. Richter
2005, p. 65).
The transportation process in SVRPs is illustrated in Fig. 2.8. A decentralized
coordination is applied during the execution of the transportation process since no
technical equipment for a bidirectional communication is available. The initial tour
plan is centrally generated irrespective of this lack of technical equipment since all
vehicles are assumed to be located at the depot before the execution of the trans-
portation process. During its execution, the individual vehicles can be required to
adapt their tour when uncertain relevant information is revealed. Note that such an
adaptation is usually only performed if changes in the relevant information make
a tour infeasible; this is denoted as a tour failure. For example, this happens when
the demand of a customer exceeds the currently available capacity of the assigned
vehicle.
In case of a tour failure, adaptations denoted as recourse actions or corrective ac-
tions are required in order to re-establish a feasible tour (cf. Gendreau et al. 1996).
Due to the decentralized coordination, recourse actions are limited to local adap-
tations of the vehicle’s tour. Moreover, since often no computational equipment is
assumed to be available in vehicles, local adaptations are often carried out by uti-
lizing predefined policy-based operations consisting of specific rules which can be
directly applied by the drivers. Due to these restrictions, recourse actions often re-
sult in suboptimal tour plan adaptations which generate high additional costs and
therefore lead to a significantly reduced solution quality. Since the minimization of
operational costs is usually pursued in SVRPs, the reduction of costs generated by
recourse actions during the execution of the transportation process is desired. This
is achieved by including the available stochastic knowledge in the initial tour plan
generation process which is carried out by sophisticated solution methods. Due to
the fact that only policy-based tour plan adaptations are performed during the execu-
tion of the transportation process, SVRPs are also denoted as a priori optimization
problems (cf. Powell et al. 1995).
2.5 Information Revelation in Routing Problems 53
In order to integrate the available stochastic knowledge into the initial tour plan
generation process, SVRPs are often formulated as stochastic programs. According
to Dror (1989), stochastic programming techniques can be distinguished into wait
and see as well as here and now approaches. While in the first type of approaches
a solution is calculated after the disclosure of some uncertain relevant information,
approaches of the second type compute a solution before the uncertain relevant in-
formation is revealed. Since the a priori solution of an SVRP is generated before
unknown information is revealed during the execution of the transportation process,
SVRPs belong to the second type of approaches. For SVRPs, two main solution
techniques exist in the literature (cf. Gendreau et al. 1996):
• Chance Constrained Program (CCP): In this type of solution technique, the
aim is to generate the initial tour plan so that the chance of a tour failure during the
execution of the transportation process is below a defined threshold. A drawback
is that CCPs neglect the costs of a recourse action that are generated when a tour
failure nonetheless occurs during the execution of the transportation process.
• Stochastic Program with Recourse (SPR): This type of solution technique pur-
sues the generation of an a priori tour plan P a with minimum total expected
costs c1 (P a ) + c2 (P a ). In this formulation, c1 (P a ) describes the costs which oc-
cur in the tour plan according to the relevant information known with certainty.
Moreover, utilizing the available stochastic knowledge, c2 (P a ) represents the es-
timated costs of recourse actions which are expected to be required during the
execution of the transportation process. In general, SPRs require more complex
solution methods than CCPs but the considered objective function has a higher
practical relevance since it explicitly considers expected additional costs.
As mentioned above, different recourse actions can be performed in case of a
tour failure. The best choice for a recourse action depends on the way in which the
uncertain relevant information is revealed during the execution of the transportation
process. For example, according to Gendreau et al. (1996), a customer’s demand can
become known when service of the previous customer has been completed or when
the vehicle has arrived at the corresponding customer request location. Moreover,
applicable recourse actions also depend on the type of uncertainty in the relevant
information which is present in the considered SVRP. In the literature, the following
types of uncertainty are conducted in SVRPs (cf. Gendreau et al. 1996, Toth and
Vigo 2002, p. 332, and Cordeau et al. 2007b, p. 45 et seq.):
• Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands (VRPSD): In VRPSDs,
the demands of customer requests are unknown. Therefore, infeasible tour plans
can occur due to capacity constraints of vehicles. This SVRP variant was first
studied by Tillman (1969) and Golden and Stewart Jr. (1978) and is by far the
most studied variant of the SVRP. More studies on the VRPSD can be found
among others in the work of Dror (1989), Secomandi (2000), Laporte et al.
(2002), Novoa et al. (2006), Christiansen and Lysgaard (2007), Mendoza et al.
(2009), and Secomandi and Margot (2009).
• Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Customers (VRPSC): Each cus-
tomer request i ∈ R has an occurrence probability pi and therefore requires no
54 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
when a tour failure occurs. As an advantage, this can improve the system perfor-
mance. However, such recourse strategies complicate the estimation of costs for
expected recourse actions during the initial tour plan generation (cf. Gendreau et al.
1996). In the work of Dror (1989), the author introduces a formulation based on
a Markov Decision Process (MDP, cf. Puterman 2005) for solving a single-vehicle
VRPSD. In this approach, the solution is reoptimized whenever the vehicle reaches
the next request where its demand is revealed. At each customer request, the deci-
sion is made whether to service the request now or to service it later. In the work
of Dror (2005), the author states that reoptimization-based approaches represent
the most promising approaches for solving VRPSDs. According to Secomandi and
Margot (2009), recourse actions should be divided into reactive actions which are
only taken when a tour failure occurs and pro-active actions in which decisions
are taken by anticipating the likelihood of a tour failure. Furthermore, they state
that the opportunities given by technological advances are especially beneficial to
reoptimization-based approaches.
Initial tour plan Tour plan adaptation during tour plan execution according to
generation before occurring dynamic events utilizing a real-time control approach
tour plan execution
Relevant information Relevant information is changed by dynamic events during the execution of
does not change the transportation process
time
Beginning of the transportation process
Fig. 2.9 The transportation process in dynamic vehicle routing problems with a centralized coor-
dination
literature, such routing problems are classified as variants of the Dynamic Vehi-
cle Routing Problem (DVRP, cf. Psaraftis 1988).
2. Stochastic knowledge is probabilistic: In this case, stochastic knowledge is
available and follows prescribed probability distributions which usually describe
all uncertain elements of the relevant information. Since occurring dynamic
events change the relevant information according to the known probability dis-
tributions, the utilization of this type of stochastic knowledge is likely to pro-
vide significant improvements on the solution quality. In the literature, these ap-
proaches are often denoted as variants of the Dynamic Stochastic Vehicle Rout-
ing Problem (DSVRP, cf. Hvattum et al. 2006 and Ichoua et al. 2006).
3. Stochastic knowledge is forecasted: In many practical applications, stochas-
tic knowledge is not directly available. However, if historical data is available,
forecasted stochastic knowledge can be generated by analyzing this data. For
example, by applying sophisticated methods on request arrivals of elapsed days
including arrival time and location, stochastic knowledge can be generated out
of this historical data. Such historical data is denoted as past request informa-
tion in what follows. Since the stochastic knowledge is forecasted, in this book,
we denote such problem scenarios as variants of a Dynamic Forecasted Stochas-
tic Vehicle Routing Problem (DFSVRP) to which also the considered RDOPG
applications belong.
Note that in routing problems which forecast stochastic knowledge it is as-
sumed that common characteristics observed in the past provide good predictions
of future events. Hence, there exist situations in which future dynamic events
may possess significantly different attributes as predicted. Since the stochastic
knowledge is known with uncertainty only, in the worst case, the utilization of
forecasted stochastic knowledge can lead to an inferior system performance com-
pared to applying a deterministic real-time control approach which only consid-
ers information known with certainty. Moreover, it is advantageous if the request
data of the considered routing application possesses specific characteristics. We
denote them as structural quality of a request data set in what follows. Hence, in
practice, it is advantageous to analyze existing real-world request data according
to their suitability with regard to generating stochastic knowledge which can be
advantageously applied. We will discuss this further in the computational exper-
iments in Chap. 8.
2.5 Information Revelation in Routing Problems 57
With regard to Powell et al. (1995), in the first case, a deterministic dynamic
model is utilized. Specifically, it is dynamic because it is updated during the exe-
cution of the transportation process but since it only considers changes which have
already occurred, it is deterministic. In the latter two cases, the utilized model is
a stochastic dynamic model since additional stochastic knowledge about expected
future events is utilized.
As mentioned in Sect. 2.5.3.2.1, tour plan adaptations required by unexpected
changes in the relevant information may lead to significant changes in the currently
executed tour plan. Although the discussed real-time control approaches are able
to perform a centralized adaptation of the tour plan by elaborated solution meth-
ods, dynamic events can nonetheless cause high additional costs. With regard to
RDOPG applications in which new customer requests arrive during the execution of
the transportation process, the arrival of many unexpected customer requests may
require the dispatching of additional vehicles. If no additional vehicles are avail-
able (see aspect 11 of Psaraftis’ approach in Sect. 2.5.2.2), vehicle tours are likely
to require significant adaptations. This negatively influences the execution of the
transportation process but also results in higher travel distances and longer request
response times which often leads to a lower solution quality. Therefore, the aim is to
coordinate the transportation process by real-time control approaches in a way that
provides an increased level of tour plan flexibility. In doing so, tour plans provide
more possibilities for adapting the transportation process according to changes in
the relevant information that have occurred without causing significant distortions.
This increased flexibility can also be regarded as a technique for increasing the ro-
bustness of tour plans towards uncertain dynamic events.
Depending on the availability of stochastic knowledge and the pursued objec-
tive, two types of approaches are useful in providing an increased level of tour plan
flexibility:
• Flexibility-increasing approaches without using stochastic knowledge: Tour
plan flexibility can be increased by least-commitment strategies such as waiting
strategies. By postponing decisions to a later point in time, it is likely that better
decisions with regard to travel distance can be made since more relevant infor-
mation is available then. In what follows, such real-time control approaches are
denoted as deterministic real-time control approaches.
• Flexibility-increasing approaches using stochastic knowledge: Stochastic
knowledge offers additional possibilities for realizing the aforementioned waiting
strategies. Moreover, waiting strategies can be extended to relocation strategies
by actively repositioning idle vehicles to subregions in which future requests are
likely to arrive soon. Furthermore, request assignment strategies can be used for
efficiently coordinating utilized vehicles. Specifically, by estimating future vehi-
cle positions resulting from specific request assignments, expected impacts, e.g.,
request response times, can be calculated for expected future requests. This in-
formation can be directly utilized for evaluating the solution quality of possible
adaptations during the transportation process. Such real-time control approaches
are denoted as pro-active real-time control approaches in this book.
58 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
In theory, stochastic knowledge is available for all types of dynamic events that
have been presented in Sect. 2.6.2. However, in real-world applications, some dy-
namic events can be predicted better than others. For example, since in many
real-world applications recurring arrival patterns of requests can be observed, the
arrival of new requests has been very often considered in approaches in the liter-
ature. Besides, dynamism arising from changes in travel times is nowadays also
well predictable due to floating car data (FCD, cf. Ehmke et al. 2009, 2010). Fur-
thermore, traffic jams are automatically detectable by traffic sensors which are
commonly installed at highways and major roads nowadays (cf. Ghiani et al. 2003
and Attanasio et al. 2007). In contrast to both these sources of dynamism, predict-
ing the location and time of vehicle breakdowns is rather impossible. Hence, in
the literature, most research deals with dynamic events arising from new request
arrivals or changing travel times.
Real-time control approaches which do not provide an increased tour plan flex-
ibility only react towards newly arriving dynamic events. Hence, we denote such
approaches as reactive real-time control approaches. In the literature review, we
will mainly focus on approaches which provide an increased flexibility in the trans-
portation process. Specifically, details on approaches utilizing waiting strategies
will be discussed in Sect. 4.3.1. Moreover, relocation strategies will be presented
in Sect. 4.3.2 and request assignment strategies will be described in Sect. 4.3.3.
In the previous section, different variants of routing problems and their character-
istics were presented. In accordance with the considered RDOPG applications, this
section deals with specific dynamic routing problems in detail, in particular those
with a centralized coordination of the transportation process utilizing real-time con-
trol approaches (see Sect. 2.5.3.2.2). First, typical objectives in dynamic routing
problems are described. Afterwards, dynamic events in dynamic routing problems
by which the relevant information is changed are presented. In addition, technolo-
gies utilized in real-time control approaches are introduced. In order to classify
dynamic routing problems according to their difficulty level with regard to finding
good solutions, a measure denoted in the literature as the degree of dynamism is de-
scribed. Based on this measure, practical dynamic routing problems are introduced
using a three-echelon classification of dynamic routing problems. Finally, two mea-
sures for evaluating the performance of solution approaches for dynamic routing
problems are presented.
2.6 Dynamic Routing Problems Which Utilize a Centralized Coordination 59
In general, three different objectives (or combinations of these objectives) are pur-
sued in dynamic routing problems (cf. Larsen et al. 2007):
• Minimization of distribution costs: The minimization of costs which are gen-
erated during the execution of the transportation process (see Sects. 2.4.12.1
and 2.4.12.2) is the most widely used objective in static routing problems. Fur-
thermore, this objective plays an important role in specific dynamic routing prob-
lems, in particular those in which the transportation process is less time-critical
and only a small part of the relevant information changes during the execution of
the transportation process.
• Maximization of service quality: If a high quality of customer service is pur-
sued, dynamically arriving customer requests are required to be quickly serviced.
As described in Chap. 1, high request response times lead to customer incon-
venience and may impose significantly high costs on the service company, for
example due to penalty costs incurred by SLA contracts. This type of objective is
considered in the RDOPG applications which are investigated in this book.
• Maximization of system throughput: This objective is applied in dynamic rout-
ing problems in which the service of as many customers as possible within a given
planning horizon is pursued. In such applications, it may happen that the service
of an isolated customer request is postponed for a long time in favor of servicing a
larger amount of other requests which are closely located to each other. Hence, as
mentioned by Psaraftis in aspect 8 of his approach in Sect. 2.5.2.2, it is reasonable
to integrate methods which ensure that no customer is postponed indefinitely.
Note that the presented objectives cannot be fulfilled to their full extent at the
same time. For example, tour plans which are generated according to the objective
of maximizing quality of customer service usually produce additional travel activ-
ities during the day which makes them suboptimal from a distribution costs per-
spective. This has also been addressed by Richter (2005, p. 200 et seq. and p. 224).
In Sect. 2.6.5, we present various real-world routing problems and their pursued
objective.
In dynamic routing problems, dynamic events change the relevant information dur-
ing the execution of the transportation process. In general, the following four types
of dynamic events are considered in the literature:
• New requests: Each newly arriving request has a location in the service area. De-
pending on the considered routing problem, a new request comprises additional
attributes such as demands, time windows, lateness penalties, and service times.
With the arrival of a new request, an adaptation of the tour plan in order to in-
tegrate this request is required. In some applications, it may be allowed to reject
60 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
new requests, often at additional penalty costs. One approach in which this ap-
plies is the approach of Yang et al. (2004). Such a rejection may be beneficial if,
at request arrival, it can already be determined that a request cannot be feasibly
serviced (e.g., due to violations of hard time window constraints) or if the costs of
servicing the request are higher than the costs of its rejection. However, in appli-
cations which aim at maximizing quality of service, for example measured by the
number of serviced customers or the minimization of request response times, all
arriving requests usually need to be serviced. This is considered among others in
Bent and van Hentenryck (2004b) and Kleywegt et al. (2009). According to Pil-
lac et al. (2010), the arrival of new requests is the most studied type of dynamic
events in the literature.
• Changes in request attributes: In some dynamic routing problems, attributes of
known requests change or, similar to SVRPs, are only revealed when the vehicle
reaches the customer location. For example, if the demand of a request turns
out to be different from what was expected, the capacity of the assigned vehicle
may not be sufficient. In this case, the request needs to be reassigned to another
vehicle. This type of dynamism is conducted in Wu et al. (2004) and Hvattum
et al. (2007).
• Traffic congestions and road blockages: This type of dynamic events causes
either increased travel times or a complete blockage of affected roads. The length
of such impacts may be known or unknown. Since the service of requests can be
delayed by such dynamic events, re-routing of vehicles to non-congested roads or
the reassignment of requests to other vehicles may be advantageous. This type of
dynamic event is considered in Fleischmann et al. (2004b), Ferrucci (2006, p. 44),
Attanasio et al. (2007), Barceló et al. (2007), Haghani and Yang (2007), Cortés
et al. (2008), and Bock (2010).
• Vehicle disturbances: This results in a decreased efficiency or a complete failure
of a vehicle due to a breakdown or a driver drop-out. As a consequence, pending
requests may be required to be reassigned to other vehicles. Moreover, if the
affected vehicle is transporting requests when a complete failure occurs, its loaded
requests need to be picked up by other vehicles at the affected vehicle’s current
location. This type of dynamic events is studied in Ferrucci (2006, pp. 44–45), Li
et al. (2009a, 2009b), Bock (2010), and Mu et al. (2010).
In order to reasonably adapt the tour plan during its execution, the current vehi-
cle positions are required to be provided to the dispatching center. In particular, if
positions of traveling vehicles are available in real-time at the dispatching center, a
newly arriving request which is close to a vehicle can be directly serviced by this ve-
hicle. In doing so, the required detour and the request response time can be reduced,
compared to returning to this request later. For this purpose, on-board systems are
utilized.
On-board systems allow the transmission of different types of vehicle data, such
as its current position, to the dispatching center in real-time during the execution of
the transportation process. The automatic determination of the current vehicles’ po-
sitions and velocities became possible with the introduction of the Global Position-
ing System (GPS) in 1995. It consists of 24 satellites which are arranged in 6 orbital
planes with 4 satellites each (cf. Kaplan and Hegarty 2006, p. 3). These satellites
broadcast the current time as well as their current position which can be received
and further used by GPS-capable devices. By utilizing the transmitted data of in-
dividual GPS satellites, GPS devices can determine their current position with an
accuracy of a few meters using the GPS operation mode called Standard Position-
ing Service (SPS) which provides sufficient precision for routing applications. SPS
is free of charge for commercial and non-commercial use and is utilized by millions
of GPS devices worldwide (cf. Kaplan and Hegarty 2006, pp. 3–4). For more infor-
mation on GPS and other satellite-assisted positioning systems such as GALILEO,
see Kaplan and Hegarty (2006).
Besides GPS-capable on-board vehicle units, a data transmission technology is
required for establishing an electronic communication between the vehicles and the
dispatching center. In the last ten years, significant technological advances have
emerged in this area. According to Larsen (2000, p. 12 et seq.), in the year 2000,
dedicated radio based communication systems were favorable compared to mo-
bile phone communication systems which had low setup costs but high operational
costs. Over the years, alternative tariff models have made electronic communi-
cation via smartphones much more economical. In the year 2011, mobile phone
contracts providing Internet access at a flat rate are available for less than 30 eu-
ros per month in Germany (cf. Telefónica Germany GmbH & Co. OHG 2011).
Moreover, data transfer rates in mobile phone networks has evolved from GSM
62 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
Besides the previously mentioned on-board technologies which allow for the track-
ing and monitoring of vehicle activities in real-time, there has been an advancement
in the technologies of dispatching centers in recent years. Specifically, the coordina-
tion of vehicles in real-time has become possible due to the development of sophis-
ticated real-time control approaches which make use of elaborated solution methods
providing a high solution quality within a short amount of computational time (see
Sect. 4.7.4 and Chap. 5). Hence, tour plan adaptations can be carried out quickly
after dynamic events have occurred in the system. This allows real-time control ap-
proaches to coordinate the transportation process under real-world restrictions.
In order to efficiently handle occurring dynamic events in a real-time control
approach, an electronic transmission of unexpected changes in the relevant infor-
mation (see Sect. 2.5) is advisable. For dynamically arriving customer requests, this
can be realized by electronically recording new customer requests in a call cen-
ter (see also Fig. 1.1). Besides day- and time-dependent travel time profiles, dif-
ferent information sources like traffic flow sensors automatically provide updated
2.6 Dynamic Routing Problems Which Utilize a Centralized Coordination 63
Real-time control
Adaptation of the executed tour plan according to the current situation in the
transportation process
Current
Dynamic events Database data
Vehicle fleet
Dynamic
E.g., incoming requests, events Representation of the Current position and
traffic congestions, Modified
current situation in the tours
current state
road blockages, or
transportation process of each vehicle
vehicle breakdowns
Fig. 2.10 Example architecture of a real-time control approach (cf. Bock 2010)
travel times on roads and highways. In order to quickly calculate travel distances
and travel times between considered relevant locations and vehicles, the utilization
of efficient shortest path approaches in combination with a Geographic Information
System (GIS) which provides road network data is advantageous. Apart from com-
mercially available road networks, OpenStreetMap is a comprehensive community-
based road network data project to which users can make contributions (cf. Haklay
and Weber 2008, OpenStreetMap 2011). For more information about existing ap-
proaches in the literature which make use of GIS systems, see also Sect. 4.7.5 in the
literature review.
The joint use of the described technologies allows for the efficient application of
real-time control approaches. In Fig. 2.10, an exemplary architecture for a real-time
control approach is presented (cf. Bock 2010). In this architecture, the current sys-
tem situation is stored in a central database which is supplied with new informa-
tion by two systems. The first system transmits changes in the relevant information
arising from dynamic events (see Sect. 2.6.2) while the second one establishes the
bidirectional communication between the dispatching center and the vehicles. It pro-
vides current information about the vehicles to the database, e.g., their positions and
the current activities of the service workers. Moreover, by using this system, vehi-
cles are informed when changes in their tour have been realized by the real-time
control. The real-time control adapts the current tour plan by transforming the cur-
rent system situation from the database into the considered problem data. After the
tour plan adaptation has been completed, the generated tour plan is stored in the
database and changes in the tours are transmitted to the vehicles.
In order to realize the bidirectional communication system, Larsen (2000, p. 14)
describes a communication architecture based on an Internet data connection. As
illustrated in Fig. 2.11, in this architecture, vehicles are equipped with the previously
64 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
GPS satellites
Position
information
Fig. 2.11 Example architecture for a bidirectional communication system between the vehicles
and the central dispatching center (cf. Larsen 2000, p. 14)
described GPS-enabled on-board units. Using this data connection, position and
status are sent from the vehicles to the central dispatching center and changes in the
tour plan are transmitted to the vehicles.
To sum up, it can be stated that using a real-time control approach by utilizing the
described systems can significantly support dispatchers by providing decision sup-
port for tour plan adaptations. Specifically, by assessing various tour plan adaptation
possibilities in a short amount of time and by enabling vehicle en-route diversion
activities, the solution quality can be significantly increased (see also Sect. 8.5). De-
tailed information about real-time control approaches will be given in the literature
review in Sect. 4.7.4 and in Chap. 5. Moreover, further research work on the utiliza-
tion of communication technologies in dynamic routing problems will be described
in the literature review in Sect. 4.7.5.
time
0 r1a r2a r3a r4a r5a r6a T
that awareness of this difficulty level is beneficial. For example, this information
can be used for assessing the performance of a solution method when applied to
different problem instances comprising individual difficulty levels.
In the literature, an approach for determining such differences in difficulty levels
arising in dynamic routing problems is the degree of dynamism (dod). This measure
considers dynamic routing problems in which dynamism arises by newly arriving
requests which is, as mentioned in Sect. 2.6.2, the most studied type of dynamic
events in the literature. The degree of dynamism exists in three versions. Its basic
version for dynamic routing problems without time windows was introduced by
Lund et al. (1996). For defining the dod, it is assumed that the execution of the
transportation process starts at time point 0 and new requests can arrive up to time
point T . Furthermore, nstat denotes the number of requests which are known during
the initial tour plan generation process while ndyn defines the number of dynamically
arriving requests. With nall = nstat + ndyn , the dod is defined as:
ndyn
dod =
nall
The dod ranges from 0 to 1 where instances with a higher difficulty level have a
higher dod. Specifically, if all requests are known in the initial tour plan generation
process, it holds that dod = 0 indicating a static routing problem. In contrast, if
all requests just arrive during the execution of the transportation process, it holds
that dod = 1 so that a completely dynamic routing problem is present. This points
to the fact that an instance of a dynamic routing problem in which only a small
fraction of all requests dynamically arrives can be considered to be less challenging
and easier to solve than an instance of the same dynamic routing problem in which
all customer requests dynamically arrive. In what follows, we use the term problems
which are easier to solve which refers to problems that make it easier to attain a
solution with a good solution quality in reasonable time. Clearly, the opposite is
true for problems which are more difficult to solve.
Despite its simplicity, other characteristics which also have a significant impact
on the difficulty level are not considered in the dod. For example, it does not con-
sider the time points at which dynamic requests arrive in the system. As illustrated in
Fig. 2.12, two instances with significantly different request arrival properties can in-
hibit the same dod. Specifically, if the minimization of travel distance is the pursued
objective, instance A is easier to solve than instance B since all dynamic requests
66 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
arrive early in instance A (cf. Larsen 2000, p. 57). Hence, after the arrival of the
last request, the remaining routing problem is a static problem. Since at this point in
time it is likely that many other requests are still pending in instance A, a tour plan
with a high solution quality can be generated according to this large amount of still
changeable decisions. In contrast, in instance B, additional changes in the relevant
information are also revealed late. Hence, at this point in time it is likely that the
majority of requests have already been serviced.
In order to consider the mentioned differences in request arrival times, Larsen
(2000, p. 58) extends the degree of dynamism to the effective degree of dynamism
denoted as edod. In the edod, each dynamic request i ∈ {1, . . . , ndyn } arrives at time
point ria in the system. The edod is then defined as follows:
ndyn ria
i=1 ( T )
edod =
nall
The effective degree of dynamism represents the ratio of the arrival times of dynamic
requests to the latest possible time point T at which they could arrive. In accordance
with the previously mentioned objective of minimizing travel distances, if dynamic
requests arrive early, the edod has a low value while later request arrivals result in
higher edod values. Similar to the dod, the edod is a measure between 0 and 1 in
which larger values indicate problem instances which are more difficult to solve.
If time windows are considered in dynamic routing problems, it is reasonable to
consider them in the calculation of the degree of dynamism since tight hard time
windows limit dispatching possibilities making it difficult to attain good solutions.
In case of soft time windows, this leads to less possibilities for servicing requests
without penalty costs compared to problem instances with relaxed request time win-
dow constraints. If the objective of distance minimization is considered, requests can
be fulfilled in more distance-optimized ways. Therefore, such problem instances can
be considered to be easier to solve than those with tight time windows. In order to
consider such time window characteristics of dynamic routing problems, Larsen
(2000, p. 59) proposes a third version of the degree of dynamism denoted as the
effective degree of dynamism with time windows (edodtw ). It is defined as
ndyn
ndyn
1 T − (ril − ria ) 1 r re
edodtw = = 1− i
nall T nall T
i=1 i=1
where rire = ril −ria denotes the available reaction time of request i and represents the
time period from the arrival time of request i to the end of its time window. Hence,
the existence of larger reaction times provides more possibilities for dispatching and
servicing pending requests which leads to a low edodtw and indicates relaxed sys-
tem situations. In Fig. 2.13, the reaction times of two instances of dynamic routing
problems, each comprising two dynamic requests, are illustrated. As can be seen
in this figure, the reaction times are larger in instance A than in instance B making
instance A easier to solve.
2.6 Dynamic Routing Problems Which Utilize a Centralized Coordination 67
time
0 r1a r1e r1l r2a r2e r2l T
Note that in dynamic routing problems in which the minimization of customer in-
convenience is pursued, it holds that ril = rie = ria ∀i ∈ {1, . . . , ndyn } since customer
inconvenience represented by penalty costs directly starts upon request arrival in the
system. In such applications, the reaction time rire is 0 for all dynamically arriving
requests. Since almost all customer requests are dynamic in RDOPG applications
considered in this book, these applications have an edodtw close to 1 making them
difficult to solve with a high solution quality.
Further Extensions to the Degree of Dynamism The described dod and its vari-
ants provide efficient measures for determining the difficulty level of routing prob-
lems in which the minimization of travel distance or comparable objective functions
is pursued. With regard to RDOPG applications in which the minimization of cus-
tomer inconvenience is pursued, further extensions are possible out of which two are
described in what follows. For example, considering Fig. 2.12, a different difficulty
level for the two instances illustrated arises. Under this objective, instance A can be
considered to be more difficult to solve than instance B since in instance A, the dis-
patcher has to deal with a large amount of newly arriving requests in a short amount
of time. This can be complex, especially if customer inconvenience depends on re-
quest response times, good and fast tour plan adaptations are required. Hence, with
regard to RDOPG applications, it is advantageous to additionally evaluate other
request arrival characteristics. Specifically, the distribution of request inter-arrival
times is another important aspect. As illustrated in Fig. 2.14, two instances with
the same edod can have a significantly different request arrival distribution. If the
minimization of customer inconvenience is pursued, instance A is more difficult to
solve than instance B since, as mentioned above, the dispatcher is required to make
good decisions for a large amount of requests at the same time. Moreover, in dy-
namic VRPs, the fleet size is often restricted (see aspect 11 of Psaraftis’ approach
presented in Sect. 2.5.2.2). Hence, a large number of requests shortly arriving one
after the other causes longer request response times and hence higher customer in-
convenience values compared to evenly distributed request arrivals.
Another possible extension which is relevant for RDOPG applications is men-
tioned by Pillac et al. (2010). The authors state that the geographical distribution of
newly arriving requests and resulting travel times between requests should be con-
sidered since they significantly determine the complexity of dynamic routing prob-
lems in which the minimization of the request response times is pursued. Related to
68 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
Instance B
time
0 10 20 30 40 60 70 80 90 T
this, we will propose a new measure for characterizing differences in dynamic rout-
ing problems with regard to the applicability of stochastic knowledge in pro-active
real-time control approaches in Sect. 8.9.
Police,
Police, fire
fire fighters,
fighters,
ambulances
ambulances
SLA
SLA repairman
repairman Taxi
Taxi
companies,
companies, cabs
cabs
subsequent
subsequent delivery
delivery
of
of newspapers
newspapers
Dial-a-ride
Dial-a-ride
(Telebus
(Telebus systems)
systems)
Repairman
Repairman
companies
companies
Long-distance
Long-distance
courier
courier services
services
Dynamic
Dynamic fleet
fleet
management
management
Vendor-managed
Vendor-managed
distribution
distribution systems
systems
Subscription-based
Subscription-based
distribution
distribution systems
systems
Fig. 2.15 Three-echelon classification of dynamic routing problems (cf. Larsen 2000, p. 63,
Larsen et al. 2007)
be serviced during the next planning horizon which is usually the next day, the
distribution company estimates customers’ inventory levels using specific meth-
ods. Hence, the set of pending requests can be well estimated during the initial
tour plan generation process. However, since the actual consumption rates of cus-
tomers may vary from what has been predicted, a small percentage of customers
additionally require service. Moreover, new customers may demand urgent ser-
vice. Besides newly arriving requests, another source of dynamism is given by
the uncertain demand of customers. Hence, capacity limitations of vehicles may
require additional but usually few tour plan adaptations during the day. A real-
world application belonging to such distribution systems is the distribution of
heating oil to private households (cf. Larsen 2000, pp. 16–17). In this application,
the oil consumption is estimated by the degree-days method which estimates con-
sumption rates based on measured outdoor temperatures. The author states that
about 20 % of all customers are dynamic in this real-world problem.
• Dynamic fleet management: In many international freight forwarding compa-
nies, cost aspects often have a higher priority than urgency of requests. Due to
the long-haul character of these transportation processes, customers are usually
required to negotiate transportation requests some time in advance with the trans-
portation company. Nevertheless, tracking vehicles in real-time and allowing the
re-routing of traveling vehicles, which still have available loading capacities, can
help to integrate dynamically arriving requests. In doing so, significant cost sav-
ings can be achieved on long-distance transportation activities.
• Dial-a-ride for handicapped people: Specialized companies offer dial-a-ride
services for transporting handicapped people between their home and their de-
sired destination, usually for medical appointments. The arising transportation
processes can be modeled as dynamic variants of the Dial-A-Ride Problem
(DARP, see Sect. 2.3.3.3). Since customers usually book transportation services
in advance, only few customers request a service on the same day. Hence, it is
possible to generate cost-efficient tour plans which also provide a high customer
service quality by meeting the customers’ desired appointment times and mini-
mizing their ride times. For more information on related routing problems, see,
e.g., Cordeau and Laporte (2003, 2007) and Cordeau et al. (2007a).
each day. Furthermore, some companies accept late-in requests. In this case, cus-
tomers may demand goods to be picked up at their location after the vehicles
have already started to collect goods so that their tours require real-time adapta-
tions. In order to realize long-distance transportation services, different logistical
structures can be used. For example, shipments are collected at the customer lo-
cations and are transported to a hub. From this hub, the shipments are transported
to individual destination hubs from which they are transported to their final desti-
nations. For more information on such logistical structures, see, e.g., Bock (2004,
p. 48 et seq.) and Crainic and Kim (2007).
Besides standard transportation services, several companies offer next-day ex-
press services which guarantee the delivery of shipments to national and interna-
tional destinations by a specified time point the next day, e.g., 9:30 am, 10:30 am,
or 12:00 am. Moreover, very urgent freights can also be delivered on the same
day (cf. DHL Express Germany GmbH 2010). In order to efficiently coordinate
such time-critical transportation processes, the utilization of sophisticated real-
time control approaches is advantageous.
• Repairman companies with scheduled customers: Specialized companies pro-
vide repair services and maintenance for their customers, e.g., for maintaining
automated teller machines (cf. Larsen 2000, p. 15). A characteristic of this type
of repairman problems is that most requests are known in advance since they arise
from maintenance contracts in which regular service is specified in known time
intervals. In addition to customer requests known in advance, some urgent cus-
tomer requests which require an immediate service can occur during the planning
horizon. Other repairman companies mainly dealing with urgent requests which
are not known in advance are described in the next echelon.
This echelon comprises real-world routing problems in which only few or no re-
quests are known before the execution of the transportation process. In these ap-
plications, the dod amounts to at least 80 % (cf. Larsen et al. 2002). Further-
more, arriving customer requests often require an urgent service. Due to primarily
customer-oriented objectives which often consider customer inconvenience depend-
ing on the request response time, one possibility for improving the solution qual-
ity is the utilization of stochastic knowledge in order to utilize available vehicles
more efficiently. More information about this will be given in the literature review
in Sect. 4.3. The following real-world routing problems belong to the echelon of
strongly dynamic systems:
• Telebus dial-a-ride systems: Larsen (2000, p. 64) presents a variant of a DARP
which can be found in telebus systems. In such systems, buses only operate on
demand, i.e., if customers request for transportation. For example, telebus sys-
tems are used on bus lines, either all day or at times where there is usually a very
low demand. According to Borndörfer et al. (1997), telebuses can also be rented
for handicapped people who cannot use public transportation systems. Similar
72 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
to taxi cab services, most customer requests dynamically arrive during the day.
However, since telebuses are usually required to be ordered some time in advance,
the urgency is lower than in taxi applications described later in this section.
• SLA repairman companies: Besides the previously mentioned repairman com-
panies in which most of the requests are known in advance, there exist repairman
companies which mainly deal with urgent problems arising in case of severe fail-
ures. As described in Chap. 1, example applications comprise professional repair-
man companies which quickly resolve severe problems faced by their customers,
e.g., manufacturing companies which are part of a supply chain. In such appli-
cations, repairman companies often need to comply with the regulations of SLA
contracts negotiated with their customers. Failing to fulfill the SLA results in high
penalty costs so that a quick reaction to dynamically arriving customer requests
is of high importance. Bertsimas and van Ryzin (1991) introduce the Dynamic
Traveling Repairman Problem (DTRP) and evaluate solution strategies which are
described in detail in Sect. 4.5.1.
• Subsequent delivery of newspapers: As introduced in Chap. 1, the subsequent
delivery of newspapers occurs when a subscriber has not received his newspa-
per in the morning as expected. In this case, a quick subsequent delivery of the
missing newspaper is required in order to minimize customer inconvenience and
maintain customer loyalty.
• Taxi cab services: Taxi drivers are often connected to a central call center where
new customer requests are recorded and dispatched. By using appropriate tech-
nical equipment (see Sect. 2.6.3), individual taxi cabs can be located in real-time
and pending customer requests are assigned to them (cf. Horn 2002a, 2002b).
Since people frequently demand instant transportation, quality of service is also
measured in this application by the resulting response time. These processes are
modeled as a Dynamic Dial-A-Ride Problem (cf. Cordeau and Laporte 2007)
since a customer request consists of two locations instead of one. Moreover, the
service time of a request, i.e., the time needed for transporting a customer com-
prises some uncertainty since travel times can only be estimated.
• Emergency services: For emergency services such as police, fire fighters, and
ambulances, typically no requests are known in advance. The solution quality of
an emergency system is often measured by the achieved request response time.
According to Larsen et al. (2007), typical ambulance emergency systems agree
on a certain level of service quality so that, for instance, 90 % of the requests
should be serviced within 5 minutes and the remaining requests within a maxi-
mum of 8 minutes. Due to the high significance of emergency services, there is
a lot of ongoing research on this topic which has also been the case for the last
decades. For example, Larson and Odoni (1981) propose the hypercube queu-
ing model which has been widely used, especially in the coordination of police
patrols. In Brotcorne et al. (2003), the authors study approaches for ambulance
dispatching developed during the past three decades. More information on relo-
cation strategies which have also been applied to this type of applications will be
given in the literature review in Sect. 4.3.2.
2.6 Dynamic Routing Problems Which Utilize a Centralized Coordination 73
As can be derived from this description, RDOPG applications, i.e., SLA repair-
men companies and the subsequent delivery of newspapers (see Sect. 1.1) belong to
the echelon of strongly dynamic systems.
In what follows, we describe two measures known in the literature for evaluating
the performance of solution approaches for dynamic routing problems.
Table 2.2 General classification scheme for routing problems including RDOPG-specific at-
tributes (in accordance with, e.g., Bodin and Golden 1981, Stumpf 1998, Richter 2005, and Ek-
sioglu et al. 2009)
Attribute Possible values
Requests
Type Pickup only
Delivery only
Pickup and delivery on the same tour (with backhauls,
see Sect. 2.4.2)
Combined requests (Pickup and delivery)
Location At nodes
At arcs/edges
Mixed
Geographical distribution Distributed with a pattern
Randomly distributed
Degree of dynamism Low
Moderate
High
Percentage of regular customers None
Few
Medium
High
All
Time restrictions No time windows
One-sided time window
Two-sided time window
Fixed time points for service
Hard time windows
Soft time windows
Multiple time windows
Divisibility Non-divisible requests
Arbitrarily divisible requests
Restricted divisible requests (e.g., minimum amount
per part)
Transshipment No transshipment
Transshipment possible
Request size Full-truckload (FT)
Less-than-truckload (LTL, e.g., piece goods)
Types of transportation objects Goods
Services
Persons
76 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
Fleet
Size One vehicle
Multiple vehicles, restricted fleet size
Multiple vehicles, unlimited fleet size
Consistency Homogeneous (one type of vehicles)
Heterogeneous (different types of vehicles)
Capacity No capacity constraints
One-dimensional capacity constraints
Multi-dimensional capacity constraints
Location One depot
Multiple depots
Freely distributed
Number of tours per vehicle One tour
and planning horizon Multiple tours
Time restrictions No restrictions
Maximum duration of tour
Loading restrictions Arbitrary loading
Restricted set of goods can be loaded
Number of drivers per vehicle (Number)
Driver to vehicle assignment Fixed
Free
Vehicle reliability Reliable
Vehicle slowdowns possible
Vehicle breakdowns possible
2.7 A General Classification Scheme for Routing Problems 77
Network
Type of network Road network (real distances)
Coordinate system (Euclidean distances)
Data Symmetric (undirected graph)
Asymmetric (directed graph)
Mixed
Travel times Constant
Time-dependent known
Dynamic with uncertainty
Planning horizon
Length One period
Multiple periods
Open-ended
Type Once
Continuous
Repeating
Tour plan
Type Daily changing tour plan
Fixed tour plan
Fixed tour plan with slack time for flexibility
Type of tours Open tours (without return to depot)
Closed tours (with return to depot)
Restrictions Maximum tour duration
Maximum tour length
Worker-dependent restrictions (e.g., maximum
working time, driving time restrictions)
Relevant information
Type of relevant information Constant
Changing
Type of problem Static
Dynamic, changes deterministically known
Dynamic, changes comprise uncertainty
Availability of changes Global
Local
Mixed
Types of considered dynamic events New requests
Changes in request attributes
78 2 Introduction to Tour Planning: Vehicle Routing and Related Problems
Stochastic knowledge
Type of stochastic knowledge None
Prescribed probability distributions are available
Forecasted by analyzing historical data, e.g., past
request information
Objective
Considered objective Minimization of travel length
Minimization of travel time
Minimization of operational costs
Minimization of the number of utilized vehicles
Minimization of the number of unserviced customers
Minimization of response time
Minimization of customer inconvenience
Applied approach
Processing of changes in the relevant Centralized
information Decentralized
Mixed
Type of applied methods Exact
Heuristic
Simulation
Real-time control methods
Type of model Deterministic static
Stochastic static
Deterministic dynamic
Stochastic dynamic
Type of application Static
Dynamic
2.8 Summary 79
extended by attributes which are relevant for the considered RDOPG applications is
presented. The resulting classification scheme is illustrated in Table 2.2.
The RDOPG applications considered in this book will be characterized according
to this general classification scheme in Sect. 3.2.3.
2.8 Summary
linear2X
quadratic
Response time
In order to enable tracking of vehicle positions and to inform vehicles about per-
formed tour adaptations in real-time, on-board communication units are assumed
to be available in the deployed vehicles. This allows a bidirectional communica-
tion between the vehicles and the dispatching center which performs a centralized
coordination of tour plan adaptations during the execution of the transportation pro-
cess (see Sect. 2.6).
Note that in our considered problem setting, the stochastic knowledge is gener-
ated by solely analyzing and examining the available past request information. In
particular, information about expected future request arrivals is only derived from
this data. Since no prescribed probability distributions are available for generating
stochastic knowledge, the underlying distributions of the available past request in-
formation are unknown to the approach which forecasts the stochastic knowledge.
This is representative of many practical applications. The proposed forecasting ap-
proaches for generating and integrating stochastic knowledge into the pro-active
real-time control approach will be presented in Chap. 6.
After the problem considered in RDOPG applications has been described, in this
section we examine further characteristics of RDOPG applications. First, differences
from other dynamic routing problems are discussed. After that, the computational
complexity of RDOPG applications is derived. The proposed classification approach
for routing problems described in Sect. 2.5.3 is used for classifying RDOPG appli-
cations with regard to characteristics and processing of relevant information. More-
over, a general classification of RDOPG applications is presented according to the
classification scheme for routing problems which was introduced in Sect. 2.7.
the request arrival and the start time of penalty costs incurred by violations of soft
time window restrictions exists. In the edodtw presented in Sect. 2.6.4, this time pe-
riod is denoted as reaction time. Since customer inconvenience directly starts with
the arrival of the request in the system, dynamic requests have a reaction time of
0 and therefore no grace period. Owing to the absence of such a grace period,
appropriate computational experiments have revealed a value of information (see
Sect. 2.6.6.2) of about 10 which is high compared to other dynamic routing prob-
lems. For example, Gendreau et al. (1999a) state that a value of information between
1.025 and 1.041 was attained, depending on the utilized request data scenario. Note
that we were able to achieve similar results for the value of information by allowing
a grace period of 30 minutes between request arrival and the start of customer in-
convenience in our problem setting. Due to the high value of information, it can be
concluded that using additional available information about expected future events
is likely to result in a significantly increased solution quality. Hence, in the compu-
tational experiments in Chap. 8, the impact of utilizing stochastic knowledge in the
considered RDOPG applications will be evaluated in detail.
In the previous section it was described that RDOPG applications can be repre-
sented as a variant of the DFSVRP. As mentioned in Sect. 2.5.3.2.2, the DFSVRP
is a DVRP which is extended by stochastic knowledge. According to Larsen (2000,
p. 5), “the DVRP is a richer problem compared to the conventional static VRP. If
the problem class of VRP is denoted P(VRP) and the problem class of DVRP is
denoted P(DVRP), then P(VRP) ⊂ P(DVRP)”. Since the VRP belongs to the
class of strongly NP-hard combinatorial problems (see Sect. 2.3.4), the considered
RDOPG applications also belong to the class of strongly NP-hard combinatorial
problems.
In Sect. 2.7, a general classification scheme for routing problems was introduced.
In Table 3.1, RDOPG applications and the applied pro-active real-time control ap-
proach are classified according to this classification scheme.
3.3 Summary
In this chapter, the problem of coordinating transportation processes of RDOPG
applications in real-time was described in detail. One of the main characteristics
which distinguishes RDOPG applications from several other dynamic routing appli-
cations is the objective function of minimizing customer inconvenience. Customer
88 3 The Considered RDOPG Applications
Relevant Example
information is variant
globally available
and given Deterministic
by constant Centralized knowledge
Constant
relevant
parameters
/ Static problem, processing
/ Centralized available / VRP
no changes coordination
information K
KK
G KK M: deterministic static
KK
A: static
KK
K
Relevant information KK
%
is globally available
Dynamic Centralized
Deterministic
knowledge
Relevant information
and given by known
does not change
functions of time problem, processing
/ Centralized available
/ TDVRP
time-dependent coordination
data M: deterministic static
A: static
Prescribed
stochastic
Dynamic Decentralized knowledge
Type of
relevant
problem, local processing
/Decentralized / SVRP
available
knowledge of coordination
information @ F >>
---- dynamic data >> M: stochastic static
----
E >>
>>
A: static
----
>>
----
>>
Local availability of
---- relevant information
changes, no bidirectional
-- - communication available
---
Decentralized Agent-based
Relevant information ----
processing
----
----
--
Partly local, partly
global availability
of relevant Dynamic Mixed Mixture of
Changing information
relevant
changes
/ problem, processing
/ Mixed / decentralized
mixed coordination and centralized
information A approaches
6666 knowledge of
6666 dynamic data
6666
6666
6666
6666 No stochastic 8 DVRP
6666 knowledge available
6666
6666
M: deterministic dynamic
A: dynamic
Global availability of 6666
relevant information
6666 Mixed processing
changes, bidirectional
6666
66
communication available
Prescribed
stochastic
Dynamic Centralized knowledge
problem, processing
+3 Centralized available / DSVRP
global coordination
<<<<
knowledge of <<<< M: stochastic dynamic
dynamic data <<<< A: dynamic
<<<<
<<<<
Stochastic knowledge <
<<<
<<<<
can be generated
<<<<
from past request
information
<<!
DFSVRP
N.B.:
M denotes the type of model used in an approach, M: stochastic dynamic
A denotes the type of application used in an approach (see Section 2.5.2.3). A: dynamic
Fig. 3.2 RDOPG applications categorized according to the proposed classification of routing
problems
3.3 Summary 89
Table 3.1 The general classification scheme for routing problems applied to RDOPG applications
Attribute Possible values
Requests
Type Delivery only
Location At nodes
Geographical distribution Distributed with a pattern
Degree of dynamism High (over 90 %)
Percentage of regular customers None
Time restrictions Soft time windows
Divisibility Non-divisible requests
Transshipment No transshipment
Request size Less-than-truckload (LTL, e.g., piece goods)
Types of transportation objects Goods (material and immaterial, i.e., services)
Size of service area Urban
Sequence of requests Arbitrarily
Selection of requests Service of all requests
Frequency of request occurrence Once
Fleet
Size Multiple vehicles, restricted fleet size
Consistency Homogeneous (one type of vehicles)
Capacity No capacity constraints
Location One depot
Number of tours per vehicle and planning One tour
horizon
Time restrictions No restrictions
Loading restrictions Arbitrary loading
Number of drivers per vehicle 1
Driver to vehicle assignment Fixed
Vehicle reliability Reliable
Network
Type of network Road network (real distances)
Data Asymmetric (directed graph)
Travel times Constant
Planning horizon
Length One period (i.e., one day)
Type Repeating (from day to day)
90 3 The Considered RDOPG Applications
Tour plan
Type Daily changing tour plan
Type of tours Closed tours (with return to depot)
Restrictions None
Relevant information
Type of relevant information Changing
Type of problem Dynamic, changes comprise uncertainty
Availability of changes Global
Types of considered dynamic events New requests
Type of data Both real-world and designed request data
Stochastic knowledge
Type of stochastic knowledge Forecasted; past request information is
available
Objective
Considered objective Minimization of customer inconvenience
Applied approach
Processing of changes in the relevant Centralized
information
Type of applied solution method Exact solution methods used in the proposed
approach for generating stochastic knowledge
out of the past request information
Pro-active real-time control approach utilizing
simulation and heuristic solution methods for
adapting the tour plan during the transportation
process
Type of model Stochastic dynamic, using available stochastic
knowledge
Type of application Dynamic (Real-time control approach utilizing
simulation)
3.3 Summary 91
inconvenience directly starts upon arrival of a customer request in the system and
therefore can be distinguished from penalty costs which only occur if a request is
serviced late. According to results from the marketing literature and in order to eval-
uate different effects, customer inconvenience is modeled as a linear and a quadratic
function. Moreover, a maximum allowed response time is defined in order to avoid
an indefinite deferment of individual customer requests. Another important aspect
is that vehicles move on a real road network and vehicle en-route diversion is al-
lowed during the execution of the transportation process. The availability of past
request information allows for the application of appropriate forecasting methods
for generating stochastic knowledge out of it. This is a prerequisite for applying
the proposed pro-active real-time control approach to RDOPG applications. After
the problem description, various attributes of the considered RDOPG applications,
including their problem complexity, were described. Finally, RDOPG applications
were characterized according to the proposed classification approach for routing
problems (see Sect. 2.5.3) as well as to the general classification scheme which was
presented in Sect. 2.7.
Chapter 4
Review of the Literature Related
to the Considered RDOPG Applications
Routing problems are a vital research area, not least due to their practical relevance.
Recent advances in computational power and available technological equipment
have opened up new areas for research and applications in practice. As illustrated in
Sect. 3.2.1, RDOPG applications can be modeled as a variant of a Dynamic Vehicle
Routing Problem (DVRP). Hence, this literature review focuses on DVRPs that are
controlled by real-time methods in which changes in the relevant information are
centrally available and centrally processed (see Sect. 2.5.3). For static VRPs, dif-
ferent extensive surveys exist in the literature. We refer the interested reader to the
recent and detailed reviews of exact and approximated approaches for static VRPs
by Laporte (1992a), Toth and Vigo (2002), Cordeau et al. (2005), Baldacci et al.
(2007), and El-Sherbeny (2010). Moreover, for a recent and thorough survey of Dy-
namic Pickup and Delivery Problems (DPDPs) as well as of Dynamic Dial-A-Ride
Problems (DDARPs) including recent results from competitive analysis, we refer to
Berbeglia et al. (2010). Further details on static and dynamic DARPs can be found
among others in Cordeau and Laporte (2003, 2007) and Cordeau et al. (2007a). Be-
sides DVRP based approaches, approaches of other types of routing problems will
be presented in this review if they contain specific additional relevant aspects.
In this review, the terms real-time, dynamic, and online will be synonymously
used. The presented literature review is based on the comprehensive surveys by
Psaraftis (1988, 1995), Powell et al. (1995), Séguin et al. (1997), Gendreau and
Potvin (1998), Bianchi (2000), Larsen (2000), Cordeau and Laporte (2003, 2007),
Ghiani et al. (2003), Lackner (2004), Richter (2005), Flatberg et al. (2005), Ichoua
et al. (2007), Cordeau et al. (2007a), Larsen et al. (2007, 2008), Eksioglu et al.
(2009), and Pillac et al. (2010).
As mentioned in Sect. 2.5.3.2, solution approaches for dynamic routing prob-
lems can be divided into reactive, deterministic, and pro-active real-time control
approaches. This literature review primarily deals with deterministic and pro-active
real-time control approaches. These types of real-time control approaches are deter-
mined by providing additional flexibility in the transportation process. With regard
to the considered RDOPG applications, this is very important since the majority of
requests only arrive during the execution of the transportation process so that the
tour plan frequently needs to be adapted according to the changes in the system sit-
uation. Besides deterministic approaches which do not use stochastic knowledge, in
this literature review, various pro-active approaches are presented according to the
type and the utilization of stochastic knowledge.
This chapter is organized as follows. Some of the first papers on dynamic rout-
ing problems in the literature are introduced. This is followed by a description of
selected reactive real-time control approaches for dynamic routing problems. Fur-
thermore, strategies for increasing flexibility in dynamic routing problems which
can be found in the literature are described. The main part of this literature review
describes solution approaches which provide flexibility in dynamic routing with-
out stochastic knowledge followed by those that allow for providing flexibility in
dynamic routing using stochastic knowledge. Since the objective function in the
considered RDOPG applications differs from many other approaches of dynamic
routing, special attention is also given to approaches in the literature which utilize
related objective functions. After that, approaches in the literature that cover other
relevant factors for RDOPG applications, such as vehicle en-route diversion, real-
time control concepts, or communication technologies, are presented. The chapter
closes with a conclusion of the literature review in which aspects that have not yet
been dealt with in the research on pro-active approaches are also described.
The majority of approaches which deal with dynamic routing problems have been
developed during the last two decades while pro-active approaches have only at-
tained increased attention in recent years. Nevertheless, the first solution approaches
were already published more than 30 years ago. One of the first papers that deals
with a dynamic routing problem was presented by Wilson and Colvin (1977). The
authors conduct research on a single-vehicle DARP in which customer requests dy-
namically arrive during the execution of the transportation process. The requests
represent customers that request a trip from a given origin to a given destination.
The authors propose insertion heuristics for solving the considered problem.
Psaraftis (1980) also deals with a DARP utilizing a single capacitated vehicle.
Two cases are considered in this work. First, research on the static case is conducted,
in which all customers are known in advance. The author considers the minimiza-
tion of a weighted combination of the time to service all customers and the total
customer dissatisfaction experienced while waiting for service. The dissatisfaction
of a customer is modeled by a linear function depending on the waiting and ride
times. The second study considers the related dynamic routing problem in which
customers dynamically appear and demand an instant service when they arrive in
the system. In this case, the objective solely consists of minimizing customer dissat-
isfaction. Note that this type of objective function is similar to the one considered
in the RDOPG applications in this book since no grace period between customer
4.2 Selected Reactive Real-Time Control Approaches for Dynamic Routing 95
request arrival and start of customer dissatisfaction exists (see also Sect. 3.1). The
author develops a dynamic programming approach with a special priority rule called
maximum position shift (MPS) which prohibits an indefinite postponement of cus-
tomer requests. Benchmark instances with up to 10 customers are examined and
optimally solved. The author notes that, due to the MPS rule, the size of the search
space is restricted in comparison to the size of the search space that occurs when the
MPS rule is not used. Therefore, the tested benchmark instances could be optimally
solved. However, since the search space exponentially grows, the author encourages
the comparison of the performance of exact approaches to heuristic approaches. Fur-
thermore, the author suggests the use of the presented exact method as a subroutine
in multiple-vehicle variants of the considered problem.
Another early contribution to the dynamic routing literature is the work of Bell
et al. (1983). In the described real-world problem, the delivery of industrial gases
from a depot to a set of customers is considered. The objective function pursues the
maximization of the sum of delivered gas quantities. The tour plan is generated for
the next two to five days but the focus is on the part of the tour plan that is exe-
cuted on the current day. The problem is partly static and partly dynamic since all
requests of the current day are known in advance while additional requests arriving
during the day are only required to be serviced on the days that follow. However,
dynamism also arises on the current day since the quantity of the industrial gas to
be delivered to the individual customers can only be estimated with uncertainty. The
exact amount of gas that a customer needs can only be determined while filling the
tank at the customer’s location so that adaptations of the tour plan may be required
if estimated delivery quantities are not sufficient. The investigated problem utilizes
a real road network for calculating mileage and toll costs involving a heterogeneous
fleet and time windows of customer requests. To solve the problem, the authors pro-
pose a two-step solution method. In the first step, a set of possible one-day tours is
determined. In the second step, tours are selected by decomposing the MIP prob-
lem using a Lagrangian relaxation into a knapsack problem for each vehicle tour
and embedding the relaxed problem into a Branch-and-Bound (B&B) procedure.
According to the authors, the integration of the proposed approach in a real-world
delivery process has achieved savings of 6 % to 10 % in operational costs while
increasing the productivity of the deployed vehicles.
In the last decade, a lot of research on DVRPs and related routing problems has been
published and reactive real-time control approaches have been developed for these
problems. In place of this magnitude of various research work, we present some
research proposing reactive real-time control approaches in this section. Research
work proposing pro-active real-time control approaches will be presented in the
literature review in the sections that follow.
96 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
In static VRPs, the common procedure is that a vehicle directly moves to its next
assigned request after it has finished servicing its current request. If time windows
are used in an approach and a vehicle arrives at a request location prior to the start of
the assigned time window, it is often allowed to wait at this request location until the
time window opens. In contrast, in dynamic routing problems in which the objective
of travel distance minimization is pursued, waiting strategies can be advantageously
used to keep vehicles at their last serviced request location for some additional time
after service of the request has been finished. Therefore, waiting strategies can be
especially beneficial in applications in which time windows of requests open in the
far future in relation to the arrival times of requests in the system. In such cases, a
time period denoted as slack time occurs during which a vehicle would need to wait
anyway, for example at the last serviced request location or at the next scheduled
request location.
98 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
Waiting at the next request location Waiting at the last serviced request location
A B C D
3 3 3 3
2 2 2 2
4 4 4 4
1 1 1 1
In Fig. 4.1, the effects of waiting at the last request and at the next request loca-
tion are illustrated. Specifically, when a vehicle directly travels to the next request
location defined by request 2 and waits there (Picture A) and a new request (de-
noted by request 4) arrives, the vehicle has to perform a long additional travel dis-
tance (Picture B). In contrast, by waiting at the last serviced request location defined
by request 1 (Picture C), the decision concerning which request should be serviced
next can be postponed to a later time point. If a new request at a location close
to the vehicle’s last serviced request location arrives as the vehicle is still waiting
there, this new request only requires a small amount of additional travel distance to
be serviced (Picture D). Hence, new requests which arrive near the current vehicle
waiting position can be efficiently serviced with regard to the considered objective
of minimizing the total travel distance. This is especially beneficial in applications
in which no vehicle en-route diversion is allowed since, in this case, no re-routing
of the vehicle is allowed when request 4 arrives even if the vehicle has just left re-
quest 1 in order to travel to request 2. Note that if waiting strategies are used, the
decision space of the routing problem is extended since it has to be decided how
long a vehicle should wait at a specific location. Hence, the VRP is extended to a
Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problem (VRSP, see also Sect. 2.4.6).
As illustrated above, waiting strategies can be used even when no stochastic
knowledge is available. If stochastic knowledge is available, waiting strategies can
additionally improve the flexibility by deciding where and how long vehicles should
wait according to the stochastic knowledge about expected request arrivals in indi-
vidual subregions in the near future.
Note that although it is likely that applying waiting strategies will have posi-
tive effects on the solution quality in many cases, there are also situations in which
waiting strategies lead to a worse solution quality. For instance, consider a situation
where a large number of new requests with tight hard time windows occurs close to
a customer request which is to be serviced next in a vehicle’s tour. If only a limited
number of vehicles which are already highly utilized is available and vehicles are
ordered to wait at their last request location, this may lead to a larger number of un-
serviced customer requests since they cannot be serviced within their time windows.
Furthermore, waiting strategies can also lead to a worse system performance in spe-
cific applications. For example, in the considered RDOPG applications in which
4.3 Strategies for Increasing Flexibility in Dynamic Routing Problems 99
Fig. 4.2 Execution of a transportation process with and without using a relocation strategy
dynamically arriving requests can be directly serviced upon arrival and the objec-
tive is to minimize customer inconvenience, it should be carefully decided whether a
vehicle should wait when it has pending requests. Specifically, this decision should
be taken according to the probability that new requests will arrive soon and in close
vicinity of the considered vehicle. However, if this probability is not taken into ac-
count so that the vehicle waits in any case, the customer inconvenience of pending
requests will further increase. Therefore, approaches which directly service pending
requests may achieve a better solution quality in this case.
In dynamic routing problems in which quality of service aspects are pursued, relo-
cation strategies enable potential solution improvements by actively repositioning
vehicles to strategic locations where future requests are expected to arrive. Reloca-
tion strategies were first assessed by Powell (1988). By using relocation strategies,
new arriving requests in close vicinity of the strategic waiting positions can be ser-
viced faster. Relocation activities can be beneficial in scenarios where a quick re-
sponse to new arriving requests is mandatory and significantly more important than
the total travel distance. For example, this is true for ambulance relocation prob-
lems (cf., e.g., Gendreau et al. 2001, Haghani and Yang 2007, and Schmid 2012)
and, as mentioned above, in dynamic routing problems in which the solution quality
is mainly determined by customer-related quality aspects. Specifically, such aspects
may comprise inconvenience aspects so that a fast reaction to newly arriving re-
quests is pursued (as considered in Larsen 2000 and the RDOPG applications in
this book) or aspects that consider the maximization of the feasibly serviced cus-
tomers within hard time windows (cf., e.g., Bent and van Hentenryck 2007). The
utilized strategic relocation positions may be constant or dynamically determined
during the day and can be the same or individual for the vehicles.
In Fig. 4.2, the difference between letting an idle vehicle wait at its last serviced
request location and relocating it to a strategic location is illustrated in an application
100 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
The above described waiting and relocation strategies are mainly applied to vehi-
cles which are currently not ordered to directly service any requests, i.e., vehicles
which can be seen as being currently idle. In contrast, request assignment strategies
are utilized to increase flexibility in the transportation process for busy vehicles by
directly influencing the assignment and sequencing of requests on vehicles, i.e., by
actively impacting the tour plan generation and adaptation process.
If no stochastic knowledge is available, request assignment strategies can in-
crease the flexibility in tour plans by restricting the detailed planning process to
short-term decisions since it is assumed that decisions in the long-term will be
re-adapted due to other dynamically arriving requests (cf., e.g., Mitrovic-Minic
et al. 2004). Furthermore, simultaneously storing parts of different valid tour
plans (cf. Gendreau et al. 1999a) or simultaneously storing various complete tour
plans (cf. Bent and van Hentenryck 2004b) makes it possible to make quick decision
about good request assignments. For example, if hard time windows are present, this
enables fast determination about whether or not new pending requests can be feasi-
bly integrated into the currently executed tour plan.
If stochastic knowledge is available, request assignments to vehicles can be per-
formed based on estimated objective function value outcomes. By considering ex-
pected request arrivals in the tour plan generation process, more flexible tour plans
4.4 Flexibility in Dynamic Routing Without Stochastic Knowledge 101
further requests assigned, the vehicle waits at its last serviced request location for
further requests which are assigned to its tour. The objective consists of minimizing
the total travel distance regardless of the number of used vehicles. Computational
results are evaluated on modified test instances of Taillard, Christofides, and Fisher.
Besides varying degrees of dynamism, the authors evaluate different lengths of the
commit horizon, i.e., the time period for which unchangeable decisions are made
during the transportation process. The authors test their approaches on the DVRP
case in which goods are picked up at customer locations as well as on the case in
which goods are delivered from the depot to customer locations (see Sect. 2.3.2).
The authors state that in the static case, solving both variants results in the same
solution quality. In contrast, in the considered dynamic problem, the delivery vari-
ant is more costly than the collection variant. This can be explained by the fact that
a request which needs to be collected can be serviced by any vehicle with free ca-
pacity while the delivery of a request can only be performed by the vehicle which
is transporting the specific good. Moreover, this cost gap increases the higher the
degree of dynamism. With regard to the evaluated commit horizon, the authors state
that the use of longer commit horizons results in a worse solution quality. For fu-
ture research, the authors propose, among other research fields, investigating the
integration of past request information into the transportation process.
The work of Gendreau et al. (1999a) considers a Dynamic Vehicle Routing Prob-
lem with Soft Time Windows (DVRPSTW) with a limited fleet size. Requests may
be serviced late, i.e., after the end of the assigned time window, but at additional
penalty costs. The objective aims at minimizing the weighted sum of travel dis-
tance and linear lateness costs incurred by late serviced customers. The dynamic
problem is solved as a series of static problem instances consisting of the currently
pending requests. Each static problem instance is solved by a Parallel Tabu Search
metaheuristic that has been proposed by Badeau et al. (1997). In order to increase
flexibility in the transportation process, the authors utilize the concept of an adaptive
memory in which tours of different tour plans that have been previously found dur-
ing the search process are stored. The advantage of this variety of stored tours is that
when new requests arrive, the variety can be used to achieve a quick construction
of a new tour plan of high quality which integrates the new requests. Specifically, a
new tour plan is constructed by randomly selecting tours from the adaptive memory
while the probability that a tour is selected depends on its solution quality. Since
this typically leads to a tour plan which is constructed out of tours from different
solutions, this approach combines strengths of Tabu Search and GA metaheuristics.
Computational results on modified Solomon instances show that the proposed Paral-
lel Tabu Search metaheuristic produces superior results compared to other evaluated
solution methods. The authors state that it would be interesting to integrate stochas-
tic knowledge about future events such as the time-space distribution of requests into
the solution approach in order to improve decision making during the execution of
the transportation process.
The adaptive memory concept described in the previous approach is general-
ized in the Multiple Plan Approach (MPA) for a DVRPTW proposed by Bent and
van Hentenryck (2004b). Since this problem considers hard time windows, requests
4.4 Flexibility in Dynamic Routing Without Stochastic Knowledge 103
need to be serviced within given time windows. Otherwise, requests cannot be ser-
viced any more and are counted as unserviced customer requests. The objective is to
maximize the number of serviced requests (see also Sect. 2.4.12.6). The MPA gen-
erates and maintains several tour plans which are consistent with the current system
situation while deleting incompatible ones. Individual tour plans are generated by
a solution method for VRPs using Simulated Annealing and Large Neighborhood
Search which has been proposed by Bent and van Hentenryck (2004a). The authors
suggest the continuous application of the solution method in the dynamic problem
setting. Specifically, since decisions are only required at specific events such as at
the completion of the service of a request or at the arrival of a new request, the
intermediate time can be used for improving tour plans stored in the MPA. This is
advantageous since it allows a quick reaction based on high-quality tour plans if
fast decisions are required. Besides the stored tour plans in the MPA, one additional
tour plan denoted as the distinguished plan which is executed in the system is main-
tained and incrementally generated during the transportation process. Specifically,
whenever a vehicle has completed the service of its currently assigned request, the
distinguished plan is extended by selecting the next request to be serviced by the
respective vehicle. This request selection is made according to the stored tour plans
in the MPA by using a dedicated ranking function. In their work, the authors test two
ranking functions. The first ranking function called distance selects the next request
for a vehicle by the least travel distance criteria which is used in the corresponding
approach variant called MPAd . The second ranking function is called consensus and
selects the next request for a vehicle based on similarity aspects. Specifically, for
vehicle v, it is evaluated how often request r is assigned to vehicle v as the next
request in the tour plans stored in the MPA. After evaluating all requests, the re-
quest which is assigned most is selected as the next request for vehicle v. The MPA
approach variant using the consensus ranking function is called MPAc . As can be
seen, both MPA variants iteratively determine the tour for each vehicle. Specifically,
on the basis of the corresponding ranking function the next request to be serviced by
the vehicle is selected whenever a vehicle has completed its current activity. Com-
putational results show that MPAc significantly outperforms MPAd with regard to
the number of requests that can be feasibly serviced within their time windows. Fur-
thermore, the authors extend the MPA to Multiple Scenario Approaches which use
stochastic knowledge. These approaches are described in Sect. 4.5.5.
Fleischmann et al. (2004b) study an urban single-load Dynamic Pickup and De-
livery Problem with Soft Time Windows (DPDPSTW) in which dynamism arises
from newly incoming requests and changes in travel times. Since no requests can
be rejected, all requests have to be serviced. Requests can be serviced also after the
end of their time window but at high penalty costs. The objective pursues primar-
ily the minimization of request delays and, secondarily, operational transportation
costs. Since the transportation process is carried out on a real road network, short-
est path computations are required when travel time information changes during the
execution of the transportation process. Updates in the travel time information are
provided by a traffic management center and shortest paths are calculated using a
modified version of Dijkstra’s algorithm. If appropriate, vehicles are allowed to wait
104 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
3 3 3 3
2 2 2 2
4 4 4 4
1 1 1 1
Fig. 4.3 Execution of a transportation process using Drive-First and Wait-First strategy
at their last serviced request location and service of requests may be postponed.
Hence, a waiting strategy is used in this approach. For assigning the next request
to a vehicle when it has finished its current activity, the authors test three different
strategies: assignment rules, an assignment algorithm, and an insertion heuristic in
various settings. The assignment rules determine the next activity whenever a vehi-
cle has finished the completion of its current activity. Here, only the corresponding
vehicle is considered and the decision with the least cost is chosen. In case of the
assignment algorithm, an assignment problem is solved, i.e., for each vehicle the
next request is determined. Since no vehicle en-route diversion is allowed, this as-
signment determines the next request for each vehicle after the respective vehicle
has completed its current activity. The third tested strategy based on an insertion
heuristic solves the dynamic problem by maintaining a complete tour plan so that
all pending requests are always assigned to vehicles’ tours. The authors state that
test results on instances with 500 requests reveal that the assignment algorithm per-
forms best among the tested strategies. Specifically, higher degrees of dynamism
lead to a bigger improvement compared to the other evaluated strategies. The au-
thors direct future research possibilities to the evaluation of real-time methods on
the multiple-load DPDP.
Mitrovic-Minic and Laporte (2004) evaluate four different waiting strategies for
a DPDP with hard time windows and multiple vehicle starting locations. Moreover,
the available fleet size is not restricted. The pursued objective considers the mini-
mization of total travel distances. The first tested waiting strategy is Drive-First (DF)
which is equal to a policy in which vehicles directly travel to the next request after
service of the current request is completed. Since no vehicle en-route diversion is
allowed, this strategy directly commits vehicles to the next assigned requests. There-
fore, requests which arrive after departure and before service of the next assigned
request begins may lead to an additional detour when further requests arrive (see
Pictures A and B in Fig. 4.3).
The second strategy, Wait-First (WF), forces vehicles to wait at their current loca-
tion up to the point in time at which a departure at the last serviced request location
leads to an arrival at the next scheduled request location directly at the end of its
time window, i.e., at the latest allowed time point. This strategy provides the biggest
4.4 Flexibility in Dynamic Routing Without Stochastic Knowledge 105
flexibility in terms of integrating new arriving requests and leads to the best results
in terms of total travel distance (see Pictures C and D in Fig. 4.3). However, due to
the resulting tight schedule the authors state that it happens often that new arriving
requests require the use of additional vehicles. Because of this, the authors provide
two further strategies called Dynamic Waiting (DW) and Advanced Dynamic Wait-
ing (ADW). For these strategies, the authors introduce a dynamic partitioning of the
pending requests into service zones. Here, each service zone contains a number of
consecutive request locations that are close to each other. What the waiting strate-
gies DW and ADW have in common is that for traveling between requests within
the same service zone, the DF strategy is applied. At the end of a service zone, DW
applies the WF strategy whereas ADW uses only a certain part of the maximum
available waiting time. The authors define this part as the ratio of the service zone
time span to the sum of time spans of all service zones that are assigned to the tour
of a vehicle. The authors test their strategies with instances of between 100 and
1,000 requests. Computational results show the superiority of the waiting strategy
ADW with regard to total distance and number of required vehicles, especially if an
elaborated Tabu Search solution method is applied for adapting the tour plan.
In their subsequent work, Mitrovic-Minic et al. (2004) also consider a DPDP with
hard time windows. An unrestricted fleet size is assumed since, in the considered
real-world problem, a very large fleet size is available and fixed costs for vehicle
deployment are paid by the drivers. The objective consists of minimizing the total
travel distance. The authors propose a concept called double horizon that generalizes
short-term rolling horizon approaches. This generalization is applied in order to
prevent unwanted long-term effects on the tour plan execution process if only good
short-term decisions are made. The double horizon concept is implemented by using
a different objective function for the short-term horizon and the long-term horizon.
Specifically, for the short-term horizon, the objective used is identical with the one
that is pursued in the problem while the objective of the long-term horizon is to
maintain tours in such conditions which facilitate the integration of future arriving
requests. This is achieved by selecting tour plans which exhibit large slack times
in the distant future in their tours. Both horizons are optimized using a simplified
version of the Tabu Search metaheuristic proposed by Gendreau et al. (1998) (later
published in Gendreau et al. 2006). The authors apply some of the waiting strategies
described in Mitrovic-Minic and Laporte (2004). Computational results are carried
out on 100 and 500 customer request instances generated using real-world data from
two courier service companies in Canada. The results show the potential that can be
achieved by applying the double horizon approach compared to classic single rolling
horizon approaches. Furthermore, the authors introduce the definition of the value
of information that assesses the system performance of a given solution approach in
the dynamic case compared to the static case (see also Sect. 2.6.6.2).
Following the concept of waiting strategies, de Oliveira et al. (2008) propose an
approach for a capacitated DVRPTW considering the objective of minimizing travel
distance. The authors evaluate four different metaheuristics: a Simulated Annealing
algorithm, a Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure heuristic, a Memetic
Algorithm, and a hill climber heuristic. In order to increase flexibility, the authors
106 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
integrate a vehicular waiting time heuristic (VWTH). This heuristic is used to deter-
mine appropriate waiting times for vehicles at serviced request locations. As in the
previously described approaches, the purpose of the VWTH is to enable more pos-
sibilities for vehicles to integrate future arriving requests by letting them wait for an
appropriate amount of time. Consistent with the results of Mitrovic-Minic and La-
porte (2004), the computational results show that using the VWTH can significantly
improve the solution quality.
Another concept denoted as request buffering was introduced to dynamic routing
problems by Pureza and Laporte (2008). The authors study an uncapacitated DPDP
with hard time windows. In order to prioritize the quality of service, a hierarchi-
cal objective function is applied. Specifically, the main objective is to minimize the
number of unserviced requests followed by the number of used vehicles and finally
the total travel distance. Dynamism arises from newly arriving requests as well as
from random travel times. Furthermore, time-dependent travel times are present.
Since uncertain travel times may lead to longer travel activities, the authors adapt
the WF strategy proposed by Mitrovic-Minic and Laporte (2004) to a new strategy
called WE. This new strategy schedules vehicle departures in a way that a vehicle
arrives at each customer request location at the start of its time window but not ear-
lier. Since travel activities are carried out on the Euclidean plane, traveling from
location i to location j is always assumed to be performed by using the direct Eu-
clidean connection between both locations defined by the arc (i, j ). Furthermore,
since time-dependent travel times are modeled by modifying the travel time of an
entire arc, the triangle inequality is not valid in this problem. Therefore, the authors
extend the WE strategy by integrating travel time information based on fastest paths
between locations. Specifically, this concept tests whether the destination can be
reached faster by traveling via an intermediate location instead of using the direct
arc between the current location and the destination. In their approach, the authors
construct fastest paths with at most one intermediate location. This time can be used
as additional slack time that increases flexibility for integrating further requests. Ad-
ditionally, another strategy called Request buffering (RB) is proposed. This strategy
postpones the insertion of newly arrived but less urgent requests to a later time.
Since no vehicle en-route diversion is allowed in the considered application, de-
cisions become unchangeable once taken. Hence, this deferment of requests leads
to situations in which a larger number of pending requests, on whose basis better
routing and scheduling decisions can be taken, is present. This is in line with the ob-
servations by Larsen regarding the effective degree of dynamism (see Sect. 2.6.4).
The authors evaluate instances with 100, 200, and 400 requests with varying degrees
of dynamism. Computational results show that using a combination of fastest paths
and the RB strategy yields the best results among the tested strategies.
In the work of van de Klundert and Wormer (2010), the authors consider a real-
world application, which is called the After Salesman Problem (ASAP). This prob-
lem arises from after-sales service demands of customers and has similarities to the
considered RDOPG applications. A real-world case study is conducted at the largest
service organization in the Netherlands in which customer requests are required to
be serviced within a maximum response time which is defined by SLA contracts.
4.4 Flexibility in Dynamic Routing Without Stochastic Knowledge 107
on the solution quality. For future research, the integration of stochastic knowledge
in the considered application is suggested. Note that this research question is con-
ducted in the RDOPG applications considered in this book.
complexity, not all types of dynamic routing problems can be analytically evaluated.
In contrast, heuristic-oriented approaches utilize a defined strategy for dividing the
dynamic problem into subproblems and evaluate in detail the system performance
of one or more solution methods applied to solve the individual problem instances.
Studies which develop such approaches often empirically provide computational
results on given problem instances for complex dynamic routing problems.
This section starts by presenting the strategy-oriented approaches. In the fol-
lowing subsections, heuristic-oriented approaches which make use of stochastic
knowledge are presented. We refer to this type of approaches as real-time con-
trol approaches which reoptimize individual problem instances of the transporta-
tion process during its execution. First, approaches using exact solution methods
are illustrated. This is followed by the presentation of stochastic modeling based
approaches (cf. Pillac et al. 2010). These approaches often use multi-stage models
in which the stochastic knowledge is directly incorporated which results in models
which are often very hard to solve to optimality. Due to complexity reasons, a large
part of approaches deals with heuristically inspired solution methods. Accordingly,
heuristic solution approaches with manually provided stochastic knowledge. After
that, sampling-based approaches which reduce complexity issues by generating sce-
narios through sampling probability distributions are described.
are known in advance so that the problem has the highest possible degree of dy-
namism (see Sect. 2.6.4). As the name of the problem suggests, the DTRP repre-
sents a problem in which time-critical orders arrive dynamically and are required to
be serviced as quickly as possible. According to the authors, this problem belongs
to the set of real-world applications in which the minimization of customer waiting
times is more important than operative travel costs. Therefore, the objective is to
minimize the average expected system time of requests which consists of the ex-
pected waiting time, i.e., the request response time, and the service time required at
the request. Note that due to the considered objective function, the DTSP and the
DTRP are related to the RDOPG applications considered in this book if a linear cus-
tomer inconvenience function, depending on request response times, is utilized (see
also Sect. 3.1).
In the first studied DTRP variant in Bertsimas and van Ryzin (1991), dynamic
requests appear according to a Poisson process with a given intensity parameter λ.
Stochastic knowledge is given since it is known that request arrivals follow the de-
scribed Poisson process and the additionally given information that newly arriving
requests are independently and uniformly distributed in the considered Euclidean
plane. Furthermore, service times of requests are independently and identically
distributed according to a known distribution. Hence, in this approach, stochastic
knowledge is given by prescribed probability distributions. In their study, the authors
derive system characteristics of the described problem which include lower bounds
on the performance by using mathematical methods. Specifically, they present a
model formulation of the problem that allows the combination of approaches from
different areas such as queuing theory, geometrical probability, combinatorial opti-
mization, and simulation. In order to apply results from queuing theory, the authors
model the problem as a stochastic queue median problem (SQMP). According to
Kendall’s notation (cf. Kendall 1953 and Tijms 2003, p. 341 et seq.), this problem
is represented by the notation M/G/1 since the requests that arrive according to a
Poisson process have exponentially distributed inter-arrival times and one vehicle is
available for servicing the pending requests. The aim of the study is to determine
the best strategy for the repairman among a set of tested strategies under light and
heavy traffic conditions, i.e., low and high request arrival rates. The authors test sev-
eral strategies for sequencing the pending requests on the vehicle. In the First-come,
first-served (FCFS) policy, all requests are serviced in their sequence of arrival.
When the vehicle is idle, it is relocated to the median of the service region where
it waits for further requests. Therefore, a relocation and a waiting strategy is used.
The stochastic queue median policy (FCFS-SQM policy) behaves similar to FCFS
but always repositions the vehicle at the median after it has finished service of the
current request before it continues to service other waiting requests. The Partition-
ing policy (PART) partitions the service region into m2 subregions in which arriving
requests are serviced in an FCFS manner. If no requests are pending in the subregion
which is currently serviced by the vehicle, the vehicle continues to service requests
in the next adjacent subregion. In this strategy, the sequence in which subregions
are considered is predetermined. In another strategy denoted as the TSP strategy,
requests are queued and grouped into sets of a predetermined size n. When a new
4.5 Flexibility in Dynamic Routing Using Stochastic Knowledge 111
set of n requests has been generated, an optimal TSP solution for the requests in
this set is calculated. Afterwards, the requests are serviced according to this optimal
solution. If more than one set is pending at the same time, the sets are considered
in FCFS order. The Space Filling Curve (SFC) policy services requests ordered by
their arrival in repeated clockwise sweeps of a circle that covers the Euclidean ser-
vice region. In the Nearest Neighbor (NN) policy, the request to be serviced next is
determined by choosing the one closest to the vehicle’s current position.
The authors evaluate the performance of the given strategies in light and heavy
traffic scenarios by providing appropriate lower bounds. They show that the FCFS-
SQM policy is optimal in case of light traffic, i.e., in scenarios with low request
arrival rates. In scenarios with increased request arrival rates, the FCFS and FCFS-
SQM policy become unstable. In this case, the authors indicate that the PART policy
performs well. If a heavy traffic condition is present, the authors show that the TSP,
SFC, and NN strategies are the best policies. Specifically, the SFC strategy reduces
the average request time in the system by about 15 % when compared to the TSP
policy. Furthermore, the NN strategy reduces the average request system time by an
additional 10 % compared to the SFC strategy. On the other hand, the authors note
that the TSP and SFC policies tend to be fairer by considering the request arrival se-
quence more than the NN strategy and they additionally offer provable performance
guarantees. Furthermore, the authors identify that the heavy traffic policies achieve
asymptotically the same behavior so that their performance distinguishes from each
other only by a constant factor. For future research, the authors suggest extending
the problem to the multiple-vehicle case as well as considering capacitated problem
variants. Furthermore, other policies could also be investigated.
In Bertsimas and van Ryzin (1993a), the authors extend the previously consid-
ered problem to the multiple-vehicle case in which m vehicles are available for ser-
vicing requests in the Euclidean plane. They analyze two variants of the problem,
in particular the uncapacitated case and the capacitated case in which each vehicle
can only service q requests before it is required to intermediately travel to the de-
pot. In this work, the authors present strategies for the single-depot case but they
mention that the results can be extended to a multi-depot scenario if certain symme-
try conditions exist. When dividing the problem into m subregions, m independent
M/G/1 queueing systems (cf. Kendall 1953 and Tijms 2003, p. 341 et seq.) arise
to each of which the FCFS-SQM policy can be applied. Hence, the authors mod-
ify the FCFS-SQM policy of the single-vehicle case to the FCFS-mSQM policy in
which each of the m vehicles is positioned at one of the m median locations in the
considered service area. Similar to the FCFS-SQM policy, each vehicle returns after
completion of a request to its assigned median before it services the next request in
FCFS arrival order. As also mentioned in Bertsimas and van Ryzin (1991), in light
traffic scenarios, the authors prove that this policy is optimal. For heavy traffic sce-
narios, the authors propose different strategies and lower bounds. The randomized
assignment (RA) policy divides the Poisson request arrival process into m Pois-
son subprocesses by randomly assigning requests that arrive in the original Poisson
process to the m subprocesses. Each subprocess is assigned to one vehicle that ser-
vices delegated requests in the whole service area. The authors show that this strat-
egy provides a constant performance factor guarantee but that this factor increases
112 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
with m. Another policy that possesses the same dependency of m is a G/G/m ver-
sion (cf. Kendall 1953 and Tijms 2003, p. 341 et seq.) of the TSP policy which is
an extension of the previously described TSP policy for the single-vehicle case. In
this policy, requests are queued in sets of size n. In an FCFS manner, the next set is
then assigned to the next available vehicle which services the requests of this set in
sequence of an optimal TSP tour. The authors also present two variants of the TSP
policy with a performance that is independent of the number of available vehicles.
In the first policy variant called the modified G/G/m policy, the service area is sub-
divided into k subregions where each subregion forms a wedge of area A/k with A
denoting the whole service area. In each subregion, arriving requests are queued
into sets of size n/k. Whenever a set is complete, the next available vehicle services
the requests assigned to this set, in sequence of an optimal TSP tour while pending
sets are queued in an FCFS manner. The authors state that this strategy can also be
used well in the single-vehicle case since it halves the request system time that the
best strategy evaluated in Bertsimas and van Ryzin (1991) requires. In the second
policy variant, the authors utilize the same subregions as in the previous policy but
arriving requests are queued in each subregion. In specified time intervals, all re-
quests which are queued in the subsequent region are considered in an optimal TSP
tour which is added to the queue of pending tours which are again processed in an
FCFS manner. Since in this policy a new request (consisting of a tour of requests)
arrives in the queue after a predefined amount of time, this forms a D/G/m system
(cf. Kendall 1953) which can be analyzed using the same lower bounds developed
for the previously described G/G/m systems. In another policy called the Pμ pol-
icy, the service area is partitioned into m subregions and one vehicle is assigned
to each of these subregions. Requests which arrive in each subregion are serviced
by the corresponding vehicle according to a chosen single-server policy. Hence, the
authors conclude that for the uncapacitated case, all heavy traffic policies with a
constant factor which were proposed for the single-vehicle case can be extended
to the multiple-vehicle case. Furthermore, for the capacitated case, strategies from
the uncapacitated case are adapted and new strategies are also proposed. Addition-
ally, the authors discuss possibilities to adapt the presented policies to a scenario
where the objective consists not only of minimizing waiting and service times, but
additionally comprises the minimization of travel costs. As an outlook on future re-
search, the authors suggest evaluating dynamic routing problems in road networks
instead of using the Euclidean plane.
In Bertsimas and van Ryzin (1993b), the authors extend their findings to more
generalized situations in which new requests arrive according to a general renewal
process and their locations are determined by an arbitrary distribution. Furthermore,
the authors state that static vehicle routing approaches can yield near-optimal poli-
cies for dynamic routing problems if they are properly adapted. Therefore, the au-
thors state that most of the heuristics and exact methods which have been developed
for static problems are not irrelevant for developing effective policies in dynamic-
stochastic routing problems.
Papastavrou (1996) introduces a new strategy for the single-vehicle case of the
DTRP called the generation policy. This policy positions the vehicle at the median
4.5 Flexibility in Dynamic Routing Using Stochastic Knowledge 113
of the service region and services requests as soon as they are available. After ser-
vicing, the vehicle returns to the median. If no further requests are pending, the
vehicle waits and the strategy starts all over again. Otherwise, the currently pend-
ing requests are serviced in sequence of the corresponding optimal TSP tour. After
servicing all of the requests of the generated optimal tour, the vehicle returns to the
median and the generation policy is again applied. In contrast to the previously men-
tioned strategies, Papastavrou states that the generation policy performs well in light
as well as in heavy traffic conditions. The author emphasizes that a policy that works
well under all traffic conditions is advantageous for practical use since a change of
the applied policy can be costly and difficult to realize. This is especially important
in scenarios where the request arrival rate often changes. The author mentions that
the generation strategy can be easily adapted to the multiple-vehicle case by posi-
tioning m vehicles at the m medians of the service region if the request locations are
uniformly distributed or at the weighted m medians in routing problems in which a
general request distribution exists.
Swihart and Papastavrou (1999) extend the research on the DTRP to a single-
vehicle DPDP while considering the same objective as in the DTRP. In this research,
two cases are analyzed: The unit-capacity case where the vehicle directly needs to
travel from the pickup to the delivery location of the request before new requests
can be transported and the multiple-capacity case in which the vehicle can trans-
port more than one request at the same time. For the unit-capacity case, the authors
derive new bounds for the system performance in the light and heavy traffic case
and evaluate different policies that are comparable to the ones tested in the DTRP.
Like in the DTRP, in the light traffic case, the authors prove that the SQM policy
is optimal. In the heavy traffic case, different policies are tested. Specifically, in the
sectoring policy, the service area is partitioned into m2 sectors. When the vehicle
has finished servicing the current request, the request that has waited longest in the
current vehicle’s sector is serviced next. If no request is currently pending in this
sector, another sector is randomly chosen. Furthermore, the stacker crane policy is
a variation of the TSP policy in which each node of a pickup and delivery pair is
treated as a single location in an asymmetric TSP. This is possible since once a re-
quest has been picked up, the vehicle is required to directly travel to its delivery
location. Furthermore, a nearest neighbor policy is also evaluated. In order to as-
sess the performance of the strategies, the authors apply mathematical as well as
simulation-based methods since not all strategies are mathematically tractable due
to complexity reasons. Their evaluations show that while the sectoring policy has
a bad performance, the stacker crane policy as well as the nearest neighbor policy
perform better while the nearest neighbor policy performs best out of the tested poli-
cies. In the multiple-capacity case, the light traffic case is not analyzed any further
since it is very unlikely that in this case more than one request is pending at a time
point. For the heavy traffic case, two further strategies are invented, that is the Dual
TSP policy and the multiple-capacity nearest neighbor policy. Computational re-
sults show that the multiple-capacity nearest neighbor strategy performs better than
the Dual TSP policy. According to the authors, two further tested variants of the
Dual TSP policy, i.e., the Partially Sectored Dual TSP policy and the Sectored Dual
114 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
TSP policy, yield the best results when only one sector is used so that both variants
become exactly the same as the original Dual TSP policy. For future research, the
authors suggest improving the proposed bounds and considering multiple-vehicle
problem variants.
In his PhD thesis, Larsen (2000) extends the definition of the degree of dy-
namism (see Sect. 2.6.4) which had originally been introduced by Lund et al. (1996).
Furthermore, the author gives detailed information about the generation of customer
requests and request-specific attributes such as appropriate distributions for gener-
ating arrival times, service times, locations, and demands. Moreover, he proposes
heuristic solution methods for three different dynamic routing problems. One of the
evaluations is performed on the DVRPTW under different degrees of dynamism
without using stochastic knowledge while the other two investigated dynamic rout-
ing problems use stochastic knowledge and are described in what follows. In the first
problem, the author extends the single-vehicle case of the DTRP to the The Partially
Dynamic Traveling Repairman Problem (PDTRP). In this problem, a given portion
of all requests to be serviced is known before the execution of the transportation
process. Furthermore, the considered objective function is different from the re-
search on the DTRP described so far since it pursues the minimization of travel
costs. During the execution of the transportation process, the dynamic requests ar-
rive according to a Poisson process whose properties are known and can be used
as stochastic knowledge in order to define appropriate strategies. Service times of
all customers are assumed to be distributed according to a log-normal distribution.
Moreover, vehicle en-route diversion is not allowed. The author evaluates the strate-
gies FCFS, FCFS-SQM, NN, and PART on instances with varying degrees of dy-
namism. The results of the conducted experiments show that the NN policy performs
best among the tested strategies. Utilizing the given objective, the FCFS-SQM pol-
icy performs poorly since it generates additional travel activities to the median of
the service area after each completion of service of a request. Furthermore, using
the NN strategy, the author states that travel costs linearly increase with the degree
of dynamism. The results of this study as well as the extended definition of the
degree of dynamism have also been published in Larsen et al. (2002). For future
work, the author proposes utilizing stochastic knowledge that provides information
about arrival rates of customer requests in specific parts of the service area as well
as information about changes in these rates during the day. For this purpose, the
author outlines an algorithm for integrating dummy customers based on historical
request data. In the second considered application which utilizes stochastic knowl-
edge, Larsen introduces the A Priori Dynamic Traveling Salesman Problem with
Time Windows (ADTSPTW) in which soft time windows are present. Similar to the
previously considered PDTRP, service times of requests are distributed according
to a log-normal distribution and vehicle en-route diversion is prohibited. The ob-
jective function consists of minimizing a weighted sum of travel costs and lateness
costs which occur if a request is serviced after the end of its time window. Lateness
costs depend linearly on the length of the lateness. Dynamically arriving requests
are generated by dividing the considered service area into subregions. In each sub-
region i, requests arrive according to a Poisson process with an individual intensity
4.5 Flexibility in Dynamic Routing Using Stochastic Knowledge 115
parameter λi . These intensity parameters remain constant over the considered plan-
ning horizon and are assumed to be available as stochastic knowledge. In this study,
the effects of applying different strategies are examined if the available stochastic
knowledge is utilized. Specifically, this knowledge is used to choose an appropriate
waiting position for the vehicle if it is currently idle or if the time window of its
next assigned customer request only starts in the far future. Hence, the proposed
approach makes use of waiting and relocation strategies. Whenever new requests
arrive, a TSP is solved by a local search heuristic in which a given solution is im-
proved by exchanging two customer requests if this leads to an improvement of the
solution. The author mentions that since the applied heuristic utilizes a running time
of less than two seconds, concurrency considerations of adapting and executing the
tour can be neglected due to the shortness of the required time period. In the compu-
tational experiments, different strategies are assessed to select the waiting position
out of a set of predefined waiting locations where one idle point is defined per sub-
region i. Depending on the used strategy, the waiting point for the vehicle is: (a) the
nearest (NEAREST), (b) the one in the subregion i with the highest rate parame-
ter λi (BUSIEST), or (c) the waiting point of the subregion in which it is expected
that the most requests can be serviced within the current idle time of the vehicle,
i.e., the time period which is available before the vehicle departs from the selected
subregion, at the latest, in order to service other currently pending requests with
a time window opening far in the future (HI-REQ). Hence, the HI-REQ strategy
takes into account the distance from the chosen subregion to other customers that
are known but can only be serviced farther in the future. After the potential waiting
location has been selected according to the used strategy, the probability that at least
one more request will occur in the selected subregion within the current idle time
is determined. This probability is used to decide, according to a defined threshold,
whether the vehicle is relocated to this waiting point or not. Clearly, the higher this
threshold, the fewer the relocation activities that are performed. As a reference, the
author defines a strategy denoted as NO REPOS in which the vehicle always waits
at the last serviced customer request location so that no relocations are performed.
In the computational experiments, two variants of the objective function were con-
sidered. In the first variant, the minimization of travel costs is prioritized while in the
second variant, the minimization of lateness costs is the topmost aim. According to
first provided results, small improvements can be attained for reducing the lateness
while a higher threshold reduces the total travel distance due to fewer relocation
activities. The author states that more research on these policies is likely to result
in significant additional solution quality improvements. In Larsen et al. (2004), the
authors continue to study the previously described ADTSPTW. The authors provide
extensive computational results and identify recommendations about which policy
should be used depending on the objective and the degree of dynamism.
Irani et al. (2004) perform research on a variant of the DTRP in which a single
vehicle services dynamically arriving requests which require no service time at their
location. Each arriving request is required to be serviced until a given latest time
point. In their study, the authors use a uniform distribution for modeling the length
of the time period between request arrival and the latest allowed time point. The
116 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
future request arrivals is known in advance with certainty. Two different request lo-
cation distributions are tested. In the first setting, request locations are independent
and identically distributed according to the uniform distribution on the interval, and
in the second setting, customer locations are independent and identically distributed
according to a specific discrete distribution. Computational results provided for sev-
eral instances under the different scenarios show that the multi-stage sample average
approximation policy often performs best among the tested approaches. The authors
propose to extend the approaches to the multiple request case per period. First re-
sults for this case can be found in the PhD thesis of Uyar (2008).
In the work of Yang et al. (2004), the authors consider a multi-vehicle truckload
DPDP in which each vehicle can carry at most one request at the same time. Re-
quests dynamically arrive over time and a small time period for each request is
given during which a newly arriving request may be accepted or rejected. Requests
have soft time windows at pickups and deliveries so that service after the end of a
time window is allowed but at the expense of additional linear lateness costs. Rev-
enue is gained if a request is accepted, otherwise penalty costs have to be paid. The
objective is to maximize the total profit resulting from request profits and penalties
as well as lateness and travel costs. The individual problem instances which arise
during the execution of the transportation process are formulated as a Mixed Inte-
ger Programming (MIP) problem whereas, due to complexity reasons, the number
of considered requests in each MIP problem instance is limited by a pre-selection
routine. The authors evaluate five different policies for solving the dynamic prob-
lem. Among these policies are three local adaptation heuristics and two approaches
which globally reoptimize the tour plan. The latter two approaches solve the MIP
problem with a time limit of 20 seconds. Both approaches are different from each
other in that one reoptimization approach makes myopic decisions based on deter-
ministically available knowledge only while the other approach additionally uses
given stochastic knowledge about expected future request arrivals. This stochastic
knowledge is utilized by integrating expected opportunity costs into the objective
function. These costs are based on the current and future vehicle positions resulting
from assigned requests in relation to expected future request arrivals. Hence, vehi-
cles are more likely to be deployed within the considered service area according to
the expected request arrival rates. Computational results on test instances with 10 ve-
hicles and 1,000 requests with varying degrees of system utilization show that the
two reoptimization approaches perform better than the local adaptation heuristic ap-
proaches. Out of the two evaluated reoptimization-based approaches, the one which
additionally uses stochastic knowledge performs best by yielding about 5 % better
results compared to the myopic reoptimization approach. The authors mention that
further research on methods which utilize stochastic knowledge more efficiently is
likely to have a big potential for additional improvements.
4.5 Flexibility in Dynamic Routing Using Stochastic Knowledge 119
In this section, approaches which model the dynamic routing problem by using
specific stochastic formulations are presented. According to Powell et al. (1995),
these models are called multistage stochastic models which directly utilize stochas-
tic knowledge available by prescribed probabilistic distributions. For example, these
models use Markov Decision Processes (MDP) or Approximate Dynamic Program-
ming formulations.
Powell (1988) considers a truckload DPDP in which each vehicle can carry one
request at a time. In this problem, requests have to be picked up at one location and
require transportation to another location. After the request has been delivered, the
next action for the empty vehicle has to be decided. Specifically, possible actions
consist of assigning the vehicle to another pending request, keeping it at its current
location, or relocating it to another location (e.g., a different city) in anticipation
of future requests arriving there. Hence, waiting and relocation strategies are used
in this approach. Stochastic knowledge is given by request arrival rates which vary
in different subregions and may also change during the day. The considered practi-
cal application arises from a business case in which large transportation companies
regularly subcontract requests. According to the author, this problem has a degree
of dynamism of 60 %. Since newly arriving requests are often delegated to compa-
nies that currently have trucks close to the pickup location of a new request, it is
beneficial for carriers to have trucks close to locations where new arriving requests
are expected to occur in the near future. However, each company has to balance
travel costs generated by relocating trucks with the expected profitability of arriv-
ing requests in each region. Moreover, companies may reject requests if they do not
appear profitable. The author names this problem the dynamic vehicle allocation
problem (DVA). In this work, the author gives an overview of different techniques
on how to model the DVA in the single and multiple-vehicle variant. In addition
to deterministic models including static single stage and dynamic time-space mod-
els, stochastic network formulations are presented. Furthermore, the problem is also
modeled using an MDP formulation. The author mentions that the state space grows
very quickly so that the problem becomes intractable for real-life problem instances.
Moreover, a two-stage stochastic programming formulation of the DVA is described
in which the first stage consists of known requests and the second stage represents
the expected value of having additional vehicles in specific regions. Insights into
the multistage deterministic formulation and the two-stage stochastic formulation
are combined to form a hybrid model. Moreover, an overview of alternative models
is given. This work provides one of the first references in the literature for using
stochastic knowledge in order to relocate vehicles and decide about their waiting
times at certain locations where future requests are anticipated.
In a later paper, Powell (1996) continues the research of a long-haul transporta-
tion process in which requests have to be assigned to vehicles in real-time. Besides
reviewing a variety of alternative models for this dynamic assignment problem, the
author develops a new model for approximately solving the stochastic and dynamic
120 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
case which turns the considered problem into an NP-hard TSP. This fact can also
be observed at the computational times required for calculating an optimal solution.
Specifically, while less than one second is required in the single request case, an
instance with seven potentially arriving customer requests requires over 8,000 sec-
onds of computational time. Hence, the authors state that using the proposed dy-
namic programming approach might encounter problems in solving real-life sized
problem instances so that future research should improve the computational effi-
ciency of the applied solution methods. Furthermore the authors suggest extending
the anticipatory strategy to the multiple-vehicle variant of the considered routing
problem.
In Ichoua et al. (2006), the authors consider an uncapacitated DVRP where a
set of given heterogeneous vehicles needs to service dynamically arriving requests
with soft time windows. If service of a request is performed after the end of its time
window, linear penalty costs occur. All vehicles have to return to the depot by a
given time point at the latest. The objective is to maximize the number of serviced
customers and, as a subordinate goal, minimizing the sum of travel and lateness
costs. Vehicles move in the Euclidean plane and en-route diversion of vehicles is
not allowed. Requests arrive according to time- and space-dependent Poisson pro-
cesses. Specifically, the considered service area is divided into geographic zones and
the considered planning horizon is divided into time periods. Each of these zones
can have a different request arrival rate assigned in each time period. Therefore, re-
quest arrival rates vary in different zones of the considered service area. Stochastic
knowledge is given by having knowledge about the intensity rates of the time-space
Poisson processes in advance. In order to increase the ability of servicing more
requests, vehicles may wait at the location of their last serviced request if the prob-
ability of further arriving requests nearby is high in the near future, even if requests
that are located further away are currently pending. Hence, the VRP is extended to a
VRSP (see Sect. 2.4.6) using a waiting strategy which utilizes the available stochas-
tic knowledge. The authors formulate the problem using a dynamic programming
approach which calculates an optimal solution for assigning requests and scheduling
the vehicles. Since the problem is strongly NP-hard, the authors propose a vehicle-
waiting heuristic to solve the problem. In the proposed heuristic that uses results
from the PhD thesis of Ichoua (2001), for each idle vehicle k at time t it is decided
whether the vehicle should wait for a defined amount of time δtk or directly travel
to the next request. If the probability that new requests will arrive within the neigh-
borhood geographical zone where vehicle k is currently located during the time
interval [t, t + δtk ] is higher than a given threshold and if not too many other idle
vehicles are already waiting in this zone, the vehicle waits for δtk time units. Oth-
erwise, it directly moves to its next assigned request. In order to determine which
request is assigned to a vehicle next, the Parallel Tabu Search metaheuristic pro-
posed in Gendreau et al. (1999a) is applied in a modified version. Specifically, if
a vehicle is ordered to wait, a dummy customer is inserted at the beginning of the
tour of the corresponding vehicle k stating that the vehicle is available for further
activities only at t + δtk . If a new request arrives while a vehicle is currently waiting
in the associated zone, the temporarily inserted dummy customer is replaced by this
122 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
new customer request. If no customer request has arrived until time point t + δtk ,
the dummy customer is removed from the vehicle’s tour and the vehicle continues
to travel to its next assigned customer according to the best solution in the adaptive
memory of the Parallel Tabu Search. Computational results on four different sce-
narios resulting from two different request arrival rates (27 and 36 requests per hour
leading to an average of 138.1 and 187 requests per instance, respectively) com-
bined with two different fleet sizes of 4 and 6 vehicles are performed. The proposed
vehicle waiting heuristic-enabled approach is compared to the original Parallel Tabu
Search procedure which does not use any stochastic knowledge. The computational
experiments show that the utilization of the vehicle-waiting heuristic yields signif-
icant improvements, especially when utilized in scenarios with a smaller fleet size
or more pending requests.
Thomas (2007) continues the study on applying waiting strategies in dynamic
routing problems. The author considers a dynamic and stochastic routing problem
with a single uncapacitated vehicle. The objective is to maximize the expected num-
ber of requests which can be serviced. In this problem, stochastic knowledge about
expected future requests is used in order to decide when and where the vehicle
should wait. The author utilizes an MDP formulation and derives analytical charac-
teristics of tested policies. In the scenario in which one customer dynamically ar-
rives, the optimal policy is completely analyzed. These results are used for defining
a real-time heuristic and other heuristics that can be applied in scenarios in which
multiple requests dynamically arrive. Computational results conducted on different
data sets show that using a heuristic strategy which uses stochastic knowledge de-
noted as center-of-gravity longest wait heuristic, performs better when the percent-
age of dynamic customers is 25 % or less. In instances with a higher degree of dy-
namism, the authors state that distributing waiting times across the currently known
requests is an effective heuristic strategy which has also been shown to perform
well in situations where no stochastic knowledge is available (see Mitrovic-Minic
and Laporte 2004 in Sect. 4.4). The authors suggest including the consideration of
the multiple-vehicle case as well as time windows for requests in future research
work.
Secomandi and Margot (2009) consider a single-vehicle capacitated Vehicle
Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands (VRPSD). In this problem, customer
requests which are known with certainty need to be supplied with a specific good.
Uncertainty arises from the fact that the quantity demanded by each request is only
known by prescribed probability distributions. Note that most approaches in the
literature solve this kind of problem by using a priori optimization methods as de-
scribed in Sect. 2.5.3.2.1. However, as mentioned in the same section, some authors
state that the full potential of solving these problems can only by achieved by using
real-time solution methods. Hence, the authors propose a new optimal decision strat-
egy for solving the transportation process during its execution. Having finished the
current request activity, the proposed strategy called partial reoptimization decides
whether the vehicle should move to one of the pending customer requests directly
or first return to the depot and perform a replenishment activity. Furthermore, split
deliveries are possible so that a portion of the customer’s demand can be deliv-
ered before and after the intermediate return to the depot. This decision takes the
4.5 Flexibility in Dynamic Routing Using Stochastic Knowledge 123
currently remaining vehicle capacity into account. Specifically, the vehicle should
perform the replenishment activity next when its currently remaining load drops
below a threshold. This threshold is based on various factors such as the expected
demands of pending customer requests. The authors propose a new computationally
efficient MDP formulation of the proposed strategy. The formulation is based on the
concept of solving a restricted set of states so that at least one admissible policy,
i.e., a solution in which the demands of all pending requests are entirely serviced, is
determined. For instances with up to 15 customer requests, an optimal solution can
be generated by using the proposed solution approach. In larger instances, memory
limitations occur so that two different methods are introduced in order to select a
subset of states of the MDP. Based on the restricted set of states, the policy is de-
termined by backward dynamic programming. The performance of the approach is
assessed on various instances. The authors show that on instances with up to 90 cus-
tomers several versions of the proposed heuristically operating MDP approaches
outperform existing heuristics in the literature and that the best performing heuristic
has a gap of about 10–13 % compared to a lower bound which has been computed
with perfect knowledge of customer demands given in advance. Furthermore, new
lower bounds for the VRPSD are derived. With the ability of solving instances up
to 15 customers to optimality, the authors show that for these cases, the proposed
lower bounds are quite tight.
As has been mentioned in this section, solving real-life problem size instances of
dynamic routing problems to optimality by using stochastic models is often compu-
tationally intractable. This is due to the generally used recourse function applied in
dynamic programming which determines an optimal solution by first solving a large
number of subproblems and then determining an optimal solution by backward re-
cursion. The issue that frequently occurs is that the state space quickly becomes
too large (cf., e.g., Desrochers et al. 1988 and Powell 2007, p. 47). In order to deal
with this issue, the backward-working dynamic programming has been modified to a
forward-working Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP). In ADP approaches,
the need to evaluate all possible states is eliminated by approximating the value
function in a forward-manner (cf. Pillac et al. 2010). Further information on ADP
approaches can be found in Powell (2007, 2009). According to Pillac et al. (2010),
ADP has been successfully used in various field of transportation applications. One
of these fields is fleet management. Here, Godfrey and Powell (2002) consider a
stochastic version of a dynamic resource allocation problem in which a set of ho-
mogeneous resources is assigned to randomly arriving new requests which are re-
quired to be picked up at one location and need to be delivered to another location.
Furthermore, some requests are known at the beginning of the planning horizon.
Three characteristics related to routing problems make this problem different from
a usual assignment problem: the integration of costs for preparing resources for ser-
vicing requests, penalty costs for late service of requests, and the occurrence of new
vehicles (besides new requests) over time. It is assumed that stochastic knowledge
which provides arrival rates of expected future events is available. The objective is to
maximize the profit consisting of the expected reward for servicing requests minus
transportation and penalty costs. The problem is solved using an ADP approach with
124 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
request. In order to solve the considered problem, the author proposes a new ADP
approach which derives good positioning decisions depending on the current system
situation by analyzing historical real-world request data and given time-dependent
travel time information. Hence, in the described approach, stochastic knowledge is
automatically generated from the available past request and travel time information.
Extensive computational tests on real-world problem instances show that, compared
to the currently applied strategy in which ambulances have a fixed waiting location,
the approach is able to reduce the average response time by 7 % while also reducing
the maximum response time. In a further test study, the regulation which stipulates
that the closest vehicle is always required to be dispatched is relaxed if a new re-
quest is not life-threatening. Using this relaxation, the average response time can
be further reduced by 0.7 %. Future work is directed at allowing the direct en-route
dispatching of idle ambulances which are currently traveling to a waiting location.
Moreover, the evaluation of improvements attainable by relocating idle ambulances
between waiting locations according to changing expected request arrivals during
the day is also suggested.
Another type of state-based solution approaches are Hybrid Adaptive Predictive
Control (HAPC) approaches. In HAPC approaches, individual states involve both
integer and continuous variables. They work in discrete time steps by generating
individual problem instances. A new time step is considered whenever a new rel-
evant event occurs during the execution of the transportation process. Sáez et al.
(2008) develop a HAPC approach for a capacitated multiple-vehicle DPDP that can
be considered as a DDARP in the Euclidean plane. Dynamism arises from newly
arriving customer requests that demand an instant transportation from an origin to a
destination. In the considered problem, up to four customers can be transported in a
vehicle at the same time. As known from DARPs, the objective includes quality of
service factors. Specifically, the objective is to minimize the waiting and travel time
of customers as well as operational costs mapped by idle travel times of vehicles.
The authors analytically develop a problem-specific state space formulation which
uses results published in Cortés et al. (2009). The dynamic transportation problem
is carried out by solving the problem for the complete number of defined antic-
ipation steps and, after the solution process is completed, implementing the next
step of the best found solution. The authors mention the importance of the num-
ber of considered anticipation steps which is heavily problem-dependent. In order
to solve the problem, the authors propose an explicit enumeration scheme as well
as a GA which is evaluated in three variants that can be distinguished from each
other according to the number of considered individuals and generations. Histor-
ical information about requests is available and utilized to automatically generate
stochastic knowledge about expected origin-destination trip patterns using a fuzzy
clustering method (FCM, cf., e.g., Xu 2005). Specifically, the FCM assigns past re-
quests to one or more defined fuzzy zones. In fuzzy zoning, requests can belong to
multiple zones through a so-called membership function which defines to what per-
centage a request belongs to each zone. Stochastic knowledge is then generated by
assigning requests to the fuzzy zone to which this request belongs with a percentage
which is at least a specified threshold. If a request does not occupy a zone with such
126 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
Pending requests may be rejected and the considered objective is to maximize the
number of serviced requests while considering fixed time windows of the requests
and a latest return time at the depot. The motivation for utilizing stochastic knowl-
edge in the considered approach is that in various real-world applications request
arrivals are often not uniformly distributed but appear in a clustered fashion. In their
approach, the authors denote such clusters as fruitful regions which are character-
ized by a high probability that new requests will arrive there. In the approach, test
instances are generated by first defining a set of fruitful regions, represented by a
set of clusters, around which requests are generated in a subsequent step within a
predefined range. In order to solve the dynamic transportation process, an evolution-
ary algorithm is used. It involves a strategy called anticipated move which relocates
vehicles to fruitful regions in expectation of newly arriving requests. The decision
whether to perform anticipated moves is directly integrated into the objective func-
tion of the evolutionary algorithm. This decision is based on the stochastic knowl-
edge available from information about fruitful regions. Using anticipated moves,
vehicles are ordered to travel to fruitful regions even if no requests have arrived
there yet but are expected to do so with a high probability in the future. Benchmark
results indicate that for certain parameter settings regarding time windows and ve-
hicle capacities, the utilization of the proposed anticipated move strategy is very
beneficial.
Branchini et al. (2009) consider a DVRPSTW in which the fleet consists of ve-
hicles with the same capacity. While some customers are known in advance, dy-
namism arises from newly arriving requests whose location and demand is only
known by probability distributions which are available as stochastic knowledge.
Pending requests have soft time windows so that they may be serviced late at the
expense of linear lateness costs. Furthermore, requests may also be rejected. Each
request has an individual revenue and a variable lateness penalty. Tours of vehicles
are dynamically adapted by a real-time control which pursues the objective of max-
imizing the expected profit regarding request revenues, lateness costs, fixed costs
for each utilized vehicle, and travel costs. A tour plan adaptation by the real-time
control approach takes place whenever a new request arrives and vehicle en-route
diversion is allowed. Tours are constructed using a proposed constructive heuristic
which scatters the utilized vehicles in the service area. Afterwards, the generated
tours are improved by an adaptive granular local search procedure. The distribution
of the vehicles over the service area is achieved by calculating so-called seed cus-
tomers. These seed customers are created by including four request-specific criteria
such as time window incompatibility and vehicle waiting times at requests. Each
seed customer is assigned to a different vehicle tour. Due to the fixed vehicle usage
costs, one aim is to determine the number of required vehicles before the execu-
tion of the transportation process. However, additional vehicles can be deployed at
additional costs during the day if necessary. The real-time control approach makes
use of relocation and waiting strategies. For this purpose, based on historical data,
strategic waiting positions are manually identified and provided to the approach as
stochastic knowledge. The performance of the approach is assessed using designed
test instances and real-world problem instances that are based on transportation pro-
cesses of Brazilian logistic companies. These instances are determined by a degree
128 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
Algorithm 4.1 Basic online optimization (H ) (adapted from Bent and van Henten-
ryck 2004c)
1: R ← ∅
2: w ← 0
3: t ← H
4: while t ≤ H do
5: R ← AVAILABLEREQUESTS(R, t) ∪ NEWREQUESTS(t)
6: r ← CHOOSEREQUEST(R, t)
7: t ← SERVICEREQUEST(r, t)
8: w ← w + w(r)
9: R ← R \ {r}
10: end while
this basic model is considered for a dynamic routing problem in which no vehicle
en-route diversion is allowed. Note that this basic formulation only considers rout-
ing problems in which a single vehicle is present since the described framework can
only make a new decision after the previous one has been completed. The tour plan
is iteratively generated. Specifically, when the vehicle has finished servicing its cur-
rently assigned request at t ∈ H , for each pending request r ∈ R a weight w(r) that
represents the gain according to the given objective function, if request r is chosen
for service at time t, is assigned. Note that this weight may change over time. At
the beginning of the process, t is set to the beginning of the considered time horizon
denoted by H . While the time horizon has not ended, new requests that are avail-
able up to the current time are added to the set of pending requests R. As mentioned
above, one request from this request set is chosen to be serviced next. After this
selection, the request is serviced (line 7) and the time t is advanced to the point in
time when service of request r is completed. Furthermore, the realized gain w(r) is
added to the objective function value of the solution denoted by w and the request is
removed from the set R. In Bent et al. (2010), the authors make several extensions
to this basic framework, among others, for multiple decisions in order to extend the
problem to the multiple-vehicle case.
Regarding the basic strategies in DVRPs for providing increased flexibility as
presented in Sect. 4.3, it can be observed that the described framework considers
choosing the next request as the only type of decision so that the definition of the
function CHOOSEREQUEST(R, t) is the essential task for applying this frame-
work. An implementation of this function may or may not use stochastic knowledge.
The authors mention two implementations of this function that do not use stochas-
tic knowledge. Specifically, CHOOSEREQUEST-G is a greedy heuristic that sim-
ply selects the request that possesses the highest objective function gain out of the
pending requests. In another implementation called CHOOSEREQUEST-LO, it is
assumed that a function called OPTIMALSOLUTION exists which can compute an
optimal solution for the set of currently pending requests. The first request of this
solution is chosen for execution at time t.
In addition to the implementations CHOOSEREQUEST-G and CHOOSERE-
QUEST-LO that do not use stochastic knowledge, the authors propose different im-
130 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
considered by Larsen et al. (2002) (see Sect. 4.5.1). Computational results show that
in the single-vehicle case, the utilization of the stochastic knowledge in the MSA
can improve the solution quality compared to the original NN heuristic by Larsen
when applied in scenarios with a larger delivery area. In the same paper, the authors
extend the MSAc approach to the MSAc with least commitment (MSA-LCc ) that
makes additional use of a waiting strategy. Specifically, if a sampled customer is
chosen as the next requests in a vehicle’s tour, the corresponding vehicle will wait
at its current position until the sampled customer materializes or is removed from
the first position in the tour, i.e., until a real request is assigned to this vehicle as
its next request. Computational results are carried out in a multiple-vehicle setting
with capacity constraints and hard time windows. The authors show that the MSA-
LCc implementation is able to significantly reduce the total travel distance since it
postpones commitments to requests when future requests are expected to arrive. In
contrast, when the minimization of unserviced customers is pursued, the best results
are achieved by using the NN heuristic proposed by Larsen et al. (2002) as well as an
MSA approach variant in which the NN heuristic is used for solving the individual
sample scenarios.
In the work provided by Bent and van Hentenryck (2004c), the authors continue
to study characteristics of the consensus ranking function. The authors mention that
the consensus ranking function’s main limitation is its elitism, i.e., only the best re-
quest is considered in a sample scenario while other suitable requests which may
also provide robust solutions are neglected. Hence, the authors propose a modified
version called quantitative consensus which calculates the consensus value by the
sum of objective function values of the solved sample scenarios in which this re-
quest is scheduled next. Since this version of the consensus function does not reduce
but rather even increases the observed elitism, the authors present two new ranking
functions. The first one is a combination of the consensus and the expectation rank-
ing function. In this function, first the consensus is applied in order to identify a set
of promising requests. Afterwards, the expectation ranking function is applied to
this set in order to achieve a more precise ranking among them. However, since the
computational effort generated by this ranking function is still considerably high
when compared to the consensus ranking function, the authors propose a second
ranking function which is called regret. By quickly estimating negative impacts on
other requests when a specific request is scheduled as the next request in a vehicle’s
tour, this ranking function provides additional ordering information among requests
without having to solve additional scenarios. Details on this ranking function can
also be found in Bent et al. (2005) and Bent and van Hentenryck (2007). Computa-
tional results show that the regret ranking function performs well compared to other
evaluated ranking functions, especially in scenarios with a high degree of dynamism
and tight time window restrictions.
In Bent and van Hentenryck (2007), the authors propose two extended MSA
variants that make additional use of a waiting and a relocation strategy. Using the
consensus or regret ranking function, the next request of a vehicle is identified while
assigned sampled customers as next requests are regarded as a decision for the wait-
ing action. If the waiting action is chosen by the ranking function, the vehicle waits
132 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
myopic dynamic heuristic (MDH) that does not use stochastic knowledge and gen-
erates the tour plan using a local search heuristic in each interval. For reference
purposes, an offline version of the problem that has access to all information be-
fore the execution of the transportation process is also considered. In this offline
setting, the solution is solved using the same local search heuristic as in the MDH
approach. In comparison to the MDH, the authors show that the DSHH is able to
reduce travel distances up to 15 % while using a comparable number of vehicles.
If more computational time is available by choosing longer intervals between solu-
tions, the utilization of more samples can yield a better solution quality. The authors
conclude that in a scenario with loose time windows (ten hours) using an interval
length of two hours produces the best results in terms of travel distance. In contrast,
in case of tighter time windows with a length of three to five hours, the DSHH pro-
duces longer travel distances. The authors presume this to happen due to the more
elaborated local search utilized in MDH which can take advantage of finding good
solutions in more constrained problems compared to the insertion heuristic used in
DSHH. For future work, the authors suggest giving a detailed evaluation about why
the DSHH tends to sometimes use an extra vehicle compared to the MDH.
In the following research work by Hvattum et al. (2007), the authors consider the
same routing problem as the one in the work presented before. They address the pre-
viously mentioned issue of additionally used vehicles in the DSHH. They explain
that choosing the request to be serviced next according to the decision in the major-
ity of the sample scenario solutions may require the use of additional vehicles when
a request which was only considered in the minority of the sample scenarios ar-
rives. In order to deal with this issue, they extend the DSHH to a Branch-and-Regret
Heuristic (BRH). Similar to the DSHH, samples in this approach are generated from
given probability distributions. In comparison to the DSHH, a difference is that de-
cisions produced by consulting the sample scenarios in the BRH are only imple-
mented if it is unlikely that they will lead to suboptimal effects. The proposed BRH
works as follows. After producing a solution for each sample scenario, the heuris-
tic iteratively merges the individual sample scenario solutions by evaluating certain
criteria on which to branch, for example if a request should be serviced during the
next interval. This concept is similar to stochastic B&B (cf., e.g., Klein Haneveld
and van der Vlerk 1999) except for the fact that only one path in the branching tree
is considered by the BRH. DSHH and BRH differ mainly in two points. First, for
each request, the DSHH decides whether the request will be serviced in the next
interval based on a percentage threshold. In the BRH this type of decision is made
by solving all sample scenarios twice; once with the request and once without the
request. If the best decision is to service the request in the next interval, it is added
to the set of chosen requests. Hence, in comparison to the DSHH, the threshold pa-
rameter is not required. According to the authors, this is advantageous because the
value of this parameter can be significantly problem-dependent. Second, in order
to choose the next request i for a vehicle k, the assignment proposed in the DSHH
is evaluated in comparison to alternative assignments. The authors evaluate three
different variants: (a) same request i on a different vehicle, (b) same vehicle k with
another request, and (c) the setting of the previous two variants which can be found
4.5 Flexibility in Dynamic Routing Using Stochastic Knowledge 135
approach, the possible waiting positions are predefined as the stochastic medians
of the service area. In order to solve the problem, two anticipatory heuristics are
proposed that use the available stochastic knowledge about future demands by sam-
pling the given request arrival distribution. In the first proposed approach, new arriv-
ing requests are integrated into the tour plan by an insertion heuristic that stores the
best solutions for further examination. In this examination, different values for the
waiting times at each request location as well as the waiting positions are evaluated
resulting in a set of potentially good solutions. The evaluation of each good solution
is carried out by individually generating a number of sample scenarios consisting
of expected requests in the near future (denoted as sample horizon) for each good
solution. The sampled requests are then inserted by a least cost insertion heuristic.
Afterwards, the objective function value for each good solution is calculated as the
average of the costs of all corresponding sample scenarios. The number of sample
scenarios to be used for each good solution is determined using a simulation-based
optimization method called fully sequential indifference zone selection. Starting
with a fixed number of sample scenarios (10 in the experiments), confidence in-
tervals of the objective function values of all good solutions are computed. Inferior
solutions are directly discarded while additional sample scenarios are generated and
solved in order to allow a precise discrimination between the remaining solutions.
This process is continued until one solution remains in the set of good solutions. In
the second proposed approach, a local search heuristic is applied which removes a
request from a tour and reinserts it in another vehicle’s tour. Expected changes in
the objective function are calculated using the sampling method described above. In
the computational experiments, two different types of scenarios are considered. The
first scenario represents a standard courier service while the second one represents
a situation with premium customers. In both scenarios, the objective is modeled by
a linear lateness penalty function. While in the standard scenario this penalty be-
gins 45 minutes after request arrival, in the premium scenario this penalty already
starts after 20 minutes. Furthermore, in the standard scenario an arbitrary number
of requests can be consolidated on a vehicle while the premium scenario allows
only the transportation of one request per vehicle at a time. In order to obtain a
similar vehicle utilization, the following instances were tested: 100 requests with
18 vehicles, 200 requests with 36 vehicles, and 300 customer requests with 54 ve-
hicles. The anticipatory approaches are compared to a deterministic approach that
does not use stochastic knowledge. In the computational results, the authors show
that using a sample horizon with a length similar to the expected request response
time for future requests achieves the best results. Compared to the deterministic ap-
proach, the anticipatory insertion heuristic achieves significant improvements of up
to 69 % while reducing the vehicle utilization by 19 % from originally 60–70 % at
the same time. The computational results also show that in the considered problem
setting, the use of the more sophisticated anticipatory local search heuristic com-
pared to the anticipatory insertion heuristic does not yield any significant additional
improvements. For future research, the authors propose to evaluate the performance
of the approach when stochastic knowledge is not given by prescribed probabilities
but contains uncertainty.
4.6 Related Objective Functions 137
In Ghiani et al. (2012), the authors compare two different methods for using
stochastic knowledge in a dynamic routing application. These methods are inspired
by a sample scenario based approach presented by Bent and van Hentenryck (2004b)
as well as the approach utilizing anticipatory insertion proposed by Thomas (2007).
The authors consider the single uncapacitated vehicle case in which the vehicle trav-
els from a given source to a given destination while servicing a set of a priori known
and a set of potential dynamically arriving requests. Requests have no time windows
but the destination needs to be reached by a given time limit. Furthermore, all of the
a priori known requests have to be serviced while dynamic requests may be rejected.
The objective consists of maximizing the number of additionally serviced dynami-
cally arriving customer requests while taking into account a latest time limit at the
destination. For both approaches, it is assumed that a distribution is given for the ar-
rival probability for each potential dynamic customer request. In the computational
experiments, 192 instances with a total of 40 and 50 customers comprising a degree
of dynamism of 25 % and 50 % are evaluated. With regard to potential dynamically
arriving requests, different settings considering the arrival probabilities of these re-
quests are evaluated. According to the computational results, the authors state that
in case of a low degree of dynamism the anticipatory insertion performs better than
the sample scenario approach whereas in case of a higher degree of dynamism the
sample scenario approach performs better than the anticipatory algorithm but re-
quiring larger computational times. The authors mention several aspects that could
be tested in the future in order to assess the performance of both approaches under
different settings, e.g., in the multiple-vehicle case or in presence of time windows.
Having described approaches for dynamic routing applications that provide an
increased flexibility for dynamically arriving requests, in what follows, additional
approaches covering various other characteristics that are important in the consid-
ered RDOPG applications are presented.
As mentioned in Sect. 3.1, the objective pursued in the considered RDOPG applica-
tions consists of minimizing customer inconvenience in order to maximize quality
of customer service. When dealing with such quality aspects, the objective function
often contains some type of penalty function that makes solutions with poor service
quality less attractive. As mentioned in Sects. 2.4.12.5 and 2.4.12.7, such a penalty
function can contain fixed and variable components. Fixed lateness penalties can
also be used to model DVRPs with hard time window constraints where customer
requests are considered to be lost when they are not serviced within given time
windows (cf. Bent and van Hentenryck 2004b). While fixed lateness penalties are
completely determined by their parameter value, the definition of variable penalty
costs also includes a definition regarding the evolution of the lateness-dependent
penalty. In the marketing literature, two main approaches for modeling customer
inconvenience depending on elapsed request response times can be found. While,
138 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
bi ai bi ai bi
Sexton and Bodin (1985) Sexton and Choi (1986) Dumas et al. (1990)
Fig. 4.4 Different inconvenience and penalty functions (cf. Desrosiers et al. 1995)
PiMAX
Ei Ai Bi Li Ei Ai Bi Li Ei Ai Bi Li
among others, Davis and Maggard (1990) propose that customer inconvenience in-
creases linearly with resulting response time, other authors such as Kristensen et al.
(1992) derive a quadratic dependency.
In our definition, a customer quality-related objective function is called an incon-
venience function if penalties directly occur with the arrival of a request in the sys-
tem while in a lateness function, penalties only occur when service has not occurred
within specified time windows. Moreover, depending on the application, quality-
related objectives can also be used to penalize the unwanted case in which a request
is serviced too early, i.e., before the start of its time window. In what follows, rout-
ing problem-related approaches known in the literature that consider inconvenience
and lateness functions are presented.
In the routing literature of approaches for static routing problems, different types
of inconvenience and penalty functions can be found. For example in DARPs,
considered service quality consists of time differences experienced by customers
that demand to be picked up at a specified time point (cf. Cordeau et al. 2007a).
Hence, passengers should neither be picked up too early nor too late. Furthermore,
the length of the ride time experienced by passengers is another quality criteria.
Desrosiers et al. (1995) mention three different types of penalty functions (see
Fig. 4.4). The first one described by Sexton and Bodin (1985) denotes a linear de-
creasing inconvenience function with a hard time window at time point bi . The
second function describes a lateness function proposed by Sexton and Choi (1986).
Here, too early or too late service, i.e., service before ai or after bi , is allowed but
linearly penalized. In the third function, an inconvenience function by Dumas et al.
(1990) is presented that quadratically penalizes dispersion from a desired time point
of service while also limiting this dispersion in both temporal directions by hard
time windows.
Besides vehicle-based routing problems, aspects of the service quality are also
considered in other routing applications, for example multi-ship PDPs (cf. Fagerholt
4.6 Related Objective Functions 139
2000, 2001). In this static problem, outer and inner time windows exist. Specifically,
the outer time window of request i defined by [Ei , Li ] can be seen as a hard time
window before or after which no service is possible and, instead, high penalty costs
denoted by PiMAX occur. As illustrated in Fig. 4.5, the inner time window [Ai , Bi ]
represents a soft time window so that service that occurs too early or too late results
in an either (a) linear, (b) fixed, or (c) quadratic penalty.
In dynamic routing problems in which new requests arrive during the execu-
tion of the transportation process, a linear customer inconvenience function is used
among others in the described approaches of Psaraftis (1980), Bertsimas and van
Ryzin (1991, 1993a, 1993b), Papastavrou (1996), in the approaches of Gendreau
et al. (1999a), Swihart and Papastavrou (1999), Richter (2005), Attanasio et al.
(2007), Schmid (2012), and in van de Klundert and Wormer (2010). Moreover, a
linear lateness function is used in the work of Larsen (2000), Yang et al. (2004),
Ichoua et al. (2006), Branchini et al. (2009), and Ghiani et al. (2009). In the work of
Krumke et al., the authors also consider lateness functions in a DTRP encountered
by the German Automobile Club ADAC. For example, in Krumke et al. (2002), a
linear lateness function is considered whereas in other publications, e.g., in West-
phal and Krumke (2008), a quadratic lateness function is used in order to penalize
longer lateness more. The authors formulate the problem as a set partitioning model
that is solved by a column generation approach. Although the considered problem
is strongly NP-hard, the authors show that due to a low request per vehicle ratio in
tested real-world instances, limited tour lengths of vehicles are often present in opti-
mal solutions of the considered instances. Hence, the evaluated real-world problem
instances can be solved exactly or with a very small gap compared to a proposed
lower bound within a couple of minutes. Moreover, the authors report that for all
tested instances the optimal objective function value is at most 0.494 % above the
lower bound so that it can be concluded that the proposed lower bound is quite
tight and hence of high quality. Test instances of 106 requests and 84 vehicles up
to 775 requests and 211 vehicles are tested and the performance of the proposed
exact solution method is evaluated against different variants of a GA provided by
an industrial partner. Since, as mentioned above, the computational time required to
solve the problem instances which occur during the transportation process is very
important in real-time environments, the authors test the achieved solution quality
after computational times of 5, 15, 30, 60, and 120 seconds. The computational re-
sults show that the proposed exact solution method is able to perform significantly
better than the GA in terms of solution quality but also with regard to required
computational times. For all of the tested instances, the exact method provides so-
lutions with an objective function value of at most 1 % above the optimal objective
function value or also often directly an optimal solution within 5 seconds. In the
bigger test instances, the evaluated GAs still have a gap of more than 5 % after
600 seconds computational time. In Westphal and Krumke (2008), the authors im-
prove the approach for the previously presented real-world problem by proposing
a more sophisticated pruning scheme for the search tree used in the column gener-
ation approach. Computational experiments show the effectiveness of the new ap-
plied scheme. Specifically, compared to the old pruning method, the new pruning
140 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
approach requires only 38.2 % of the computational time and explores only 24 % of
the nodes in the search tree.
Besides customer quality of service criteria, driver inconvenience aspects are
considered in the objective function in the work of Savelsbergh (1992) and As-
cheuer et al. (2000) by minimizing the completion time of vehicle tours (see also
Sect. 2.4.12.4).
As can be concluded from the literature review, only a few of the described pro-
active real-time control approaches make use of a road network to map vehicle
movements and to calculate travel distances between relocations, such as Bell et al.
(1983), Fleischmann et al. (2004b), Tarantilis et al. (2004), Thomas and White III
(2004), and Schmid (2012). The utilization of a road network is important for de-
termining accurate travel times from current vehicle positions to request locations
by taking the existing road infrastructure into account. The utilization of a real road
network in practical applications is especially useful when vehicle en-route diver-
sion is allowed. When considering transportation problems in real road networks
that cover a big service area, improvements with regard to the required computa-
tional time compared to the Dijkstra algorithm can be found among others in Bauer
et al. (2008) and Schultes (2008).
4.7.3 Simulator
p. 6). Hence, by using events, all state changes occurring in the considered dynamic
system are covered.
In dynamic routing problems, applying a discrete event-based simulator is often
appropriate since the relevant system state changes whenever an event occurs. The
advantage of event-based simulators is that no decision has to be taken about time
precision as is the case in simulators which increase the simulation time in fixed time
intervals. Hence, in event-based simulators, the simulation time is always directly
set to the point in time of the next event while time points at which no relevant event
occurs are skipped so that less computational time is required for simulating the
system itself (cf. Larsen 2000, p. 111).
A discrete event-based simulator needs to distinguish between endogenous and
exogenous events during the simulation (cf. Mihram 1972, p. 219 et seq.). The first
type of events are generated by the system, e.g., when a vehicle has finished servic-
ing its current request and requires further orders. These events may trigger other
activities to be performed. For example, in approaches which iteratively generate
the tour plan by calculating the next request for a vehicle when this is demanded, an
activity is required at the occurrence of such an event. The second type of events is
represented by exogenous events which come from outside into the system, such as
the arrival of a new request which are required to be integrated into the transportation
process by an appropriate adaptation activity. Furthermore, when vehicle en-route
diversion is allowed and a real road network is used, the simulator framework is
more complex since vehicle movements need to be modeled explicitly in order to
enable a determination of their current position at any point in time. More infor-
mation about simulation environments can be found among others in Regan et al.
(1998), Larsen (2000), Ichoua et al. (2000), Gendreau et al. (2006), and Barceló
et al. (2007). More information about the discrete event-based simulator which is
developed to simulate the considered RDOPG applications in this book will be pre-
sented in Sect. 8.1.
As mentioned in Sect. 2.5, in contrast to static routing problems that only consider
the initial tour plan generation before the execution of the transportation process,
dynamic routing problems are required to be controlled in real-time in order to
monitor the execution of the transportation process and to adapt the tour plan when
necessary. Giaglis et al. (2004) mention that, once a tour plan is generated, classic
planning systems for static VRPs do not take into account the possibility of changes
in the relevant information that may require an adaptation of the constructed tour
plan. Hence, the only option for these classic systems is to discard the current tour
plan in execution and generate a completely new one. This procedure is expected
to raise problems in real-world applications since vehicles may get completely dif-
ferent tours assigned to them than were assigned before. Furthermore, it may not
be possible to consider information about current vehicle positions and statuses as
4.7 Other Relevant Factors for RDOPG Applications 143
well as already loaded goods in such systems. Therefore, the application of real-
time control approaches that are able adapt the current tour plan in order to integrate
changes in the relevant information caused by dynamic events is advantageous.
An important aspect in real-world routing applications is that while tour plans are
adapted according to changes in the relevant information, the transportation process
continues during this adaptation. Since most adaptation methods require an amount
of time that cannot be considered as zero time1 anymore, one important aspect of
real-time control approaches is that they need to take the concurrency of tour plan
execution and tour plan adaptation into account. Hence, since utilized adaptation
methods usually consider individual problem instances that do not change during
the adaptation, it has to be ensured that decisions which are taken during the adapta-
tion can still be made after the adaptation has been completed. This is, for example,
accounted for in Ichoua et al. (2000) which utilizes the Parallel Tabu Search meta-
heuristic by Gendreau et al. (1999a). In the proposed real-time control approach the
current system state at time point t is anticipated to its state in δt time units. In-
compatible tour plans in the adaptive memory are then removed and the remaining
time is used for the improvement method. The authors state that the choice of the
length of δt can be of high importance. Specifically, while a large value of δt may
miss adaptation possibilities, a too small value of δt may prohibit the improvement
method from unfolding its full potential. The authors evaluate different strategies for
setting δt, in particular for setting δt to a fixed value or for dynamically determin-
ing δt according to the system situation at t. Moreover, Hvattum et al. (2006) and
van de Klundert and Wormer (2010) consider the research question about choos-
ing the length for the time intervals in which tour plans should be adapted. As
can be seen from the different results in these research work, this value is highly
application-dependent. The utilized value in the real-time control approaches of this
book will be described in Sect. 8.2.1.
Another real-time control approach that considers the concurrency of tour plan
execution and tour plan adaptation can be found in Bock (2010). The author consid-
ers a real-time control concept that pre-simulates the system situation which exists
at the beginning of each adaptation activity for a specified time period denoted as
the anticipation horizon. After the pre-simulation, the remaining time of the an-
ticipation horizon is used to adapt the tour plan based on the problem data of the
anticipated system state. Since the real-time control approaches developed in this
book are based on this real-time control concept, more information about it will be
described in Chap. 5. Moreover, when uncertain travel times are considered, real-
time control approaches can be extended by methods for estimating vehicle arrival
times proposed by Cathey and Dailey (2003) and Jula et al. (2008).
In Zeimpekis and Giaglis (2005), the authors propose a general architecture of
real-time control approaches applicable for DVRPs (see Fig. 4.6). It can be de-
scribed as follows. In the monitoring state, the current system state which includes
1 Zero time defines a time period during which the system state of the considered dynamic process
can be assumed to remain constant. Note that the length of this time period is highly application-
dependent—in the considered RDOPG applications its length is one second at most.
144 4 Review of the Literature Related to the Considered RDOPG Applications
New dynamic
Current events pending? Adapted
tour plan yes Adaptation of Realization tour plan
Monitoring
the tour plan and execution
no
Fig. 4.6 General architecture of real-time control approaches (cf. Zeimpekis and Giaglis 2005)
the current vehicle positions and their status as well as the arrival of newly arrived
dynamic events. When dynamic events that require an adaptation of the tour plan
occur, the solution method that adapts the tour plan with regard to the occurred
changes in the relevant information is invoked. In this step, also measures for con-
sidering the concurrency of tour plan execution and tour plan adaptation, e.g., the
pre-simulation of the tour plan, are considered. After the execution of the solution
method has been completed, the adapted tour plan is given into execution. Feedback
can be provided from the vehicles after the changes in the tour plan have been com-
municated to them. Besides the acknowledgment of the transmitted changes, such
a feedback can also consist of various other elements. For example, if the approach
allows the rejection of requests, drivers may reject assigned newly requests. Further-
more, it may happen that vehicles cannot execute the adapted tour plan as planned,
for example when vehicles have a different position than has been anticipated during
the adaptation. In such cases, another invocation of the adaptation procedure can be
triggered.
which the maximization of the number of dynamically arriving requests within their
hard time windows is pursued. As can be seen in the described literature review, this
is an often considered scenario. Second, since the RDOPG applications represent
inner-city problems, the utilization of a real road network is advisable. Note that the
utilization of a road network is only considered in a few approaches in the literature
while many approaches assume Euclidean connections between the relevant loca-
tions. Moreover, as reported among others by Richter (2005) and van de Klundert
and Wormer (2010), using vehicle en-route diversion is likely to allow a significant
improvement with regard to solution quality when customer quality-related aspects
are considered. Hence, vehicle en-route diversion should be implemented in routing
applications in which a real road network is used and the attainable improvements
should also be assessed. To the best of our knowledge, in the literature, this has only
been performed in Ferrucci (2006) and Attanasio et al. (2007). Furthermore, allow-
ing vehicle en-route diversion may increase driver inconvenience due to the fact that
drivers are obliged to quickly react to occurring changes in their tour while they are
traveling to their next assigned request. We are not aware that this issue has been
dealt with yet in dynamic routing problems. In order to deal with this research ques-
tion, we propose a new approach that additionally considers driver inconvenience
aspects during the execution of the transportation process.
In pro-active approaches existing in the literature, another issue often arises when
utilizing stochastic knowledge. Specifically, while developed pro-active real-time
control approaches offer sophisticated methods for integrating available stochastic
knowledge into the transportation process in order to efficiently adapt the tour plan
according to expected future requests, in these approaches it is often assumed that
available stochastic knowledge is given by prescribed probability distributions. Fur-
thermore, it is often assumed that the dynamic requests exactly arrive according to
these prescribed probability distributions. Note that these are strong assumptions
which are often not present in real-world applications. However, since past request
information is available in many real-world applications, the development of fore-
casting methods which are able to automatically extract stochastic knowledge from
past request information is advisable. In the literature, only few approaches that
present such forecasting methods can be found, e.g., in Bent and van Hentenryck
(2005), Attanasio et al. (2007), and Schmid (2012) but these approaches deal with
applications which have significant differences to the considered RDOPG applica-
tions. Moreover, Bent and van Hentenryck (2005) and Ghiani et al. (2009) suggest
that future research should analyze the impact of the quality of the available past
request information on the performance of pro-active real-time control approaches.
This research question is addressed in this book by determining the structural qual-
ity of a request data set according to its structural distortion and structural diversity
(see also Chap. 8). Specifically, it is advisable to assess the quality of available past
request information with regard to characteristics of this information that are as-
sumed in the forecasting methods and in the pro-active real-time control approach.
For example, if request arrivals based on Poisson processes which are constant from
day to day are assumed to exist, it is advisable to verify whether the available past re-
quest information is likely to fulfill this assumption. The forecasting method for gen-
erating stochastic knowledge from past request information proposed in this book in
4.8 Conclusion of the Literature Review 147
Chap. 6 checks whether the assumed characteristics are likely to exist in the avail-
able past request information. For this purpose, the structural distortion of a request
data set is determined. Computational results on the efficiency of the proposed ap-
proach for identifying structural distortion in given request data sets are provided
in Sect. 8.6. Besides evaluating the structural distortion of a request data set, the
structural diversity of a request data set is defined and its impact on the attainable
solution quality is evaluated. For this purpose, request data sets comprising different
levels of exploitable information for generating stochastic knowledge are designed
(see Sect. 8.2.4) and two approaches for determining the structural diversity of given
request data sets are proposed. The first approach is a qualitative assessment which
makes use of a visual analysis (see Sect. 8.8). The second approach denoted as the
degree of structural diversity (dosd) is a quantitative approach for determining the
structural quality of given request data sets. It is proposed in Sect. 8.9 and its effi-
ciency is shown by using the computational results which have been attained on the
evaluated request data sets.
Two other aspects are connected with the generation of dynamically arriving re-
quests that remain unclear in some pro-active approaches. The first aspect is about
whether dynamically arriving requests appear at arbitrary locations in the considered
service area or if they can only appear at few predefined locations which is similar
to the modeling of uncertain customers in classic SVRPs (see Sect. 2.5.3.2.1). The
second aspect concerns changes in the probability distributions of request arrivals,
in particular changes in request arrival rates during the planing horizon. In order
to classify and compare differences in the structural diversity of individual consid-
ered problem settings, it is advantageous to know whether the utilized distributions
for generating dynamic events such as newly arriving requests remain constant or
whether they change and, if so, in which dimensions, during the planning horizon of
the considered transportation process. Note that this does not only apply to global
changes of request arrival rates which occur during the considered planning horizon.
In particular, it is especially important to take into account changes in the request ar-
rival rates which occur in individual subregions of the considered service area since,
as will be shown, these changes have a significant impact on the structural quality
of request data sets. The proposed dosd presented in Sect. 8.9 explicitly considers
such characteristics of given request data sets.
This book contributes new approaches for dealing with the mentioned aspects.
The proposed approaches and computational studies provide information on defin-
ing the structural quality of arbitrary request data sets and the correlation between
their structural quality and attainable improvements. These contributions provide
promising starting points for new avenues of further research which will be dis-
cussed in Sect. 9.2.
Chapter 5
A New Deterministic Real-Time Control
Approach for RDOPG Applications
Since the considered RDOPG applications are dynamic, the existing system situa-
tion changes during the day. Hence, the tour plan in execution needs to be adapted
according to incoming dynamic events. As mentioned in Chap. 3, dynamism arises
in the RDOPG from newly arriving requests. In order to integrate these dynamically
152 5 A New Deterministic Real-Time Control Approach
arriving requests, the tour plan currently in execution is coordinated during the exe-
cution of the transportation process by the applied real-time control concept. How-
ever, since the considered problem is NP-hard in the strong sense (see Sect. 3.2.2),
sophisticated tour plan adaptations cannot be carried out by zero time heuristics.
Therefore, appropriate real-time control approaches which consider relevant practi-
cal aspects of dynamic routing problems have to modify the tour plan simultaneous
to its execution, i.e., while the vehicles are continuing to perform assigned activities.
In order to fulfill this requirement, the proposed real-time control approach im-
plements a concept related to the one described by Bock (2010). In this concept,
the real-time control of the considered transportation process during its execution
is conducted by solving a series of individual static problem instances. They arise
from system snapshots of the ongoing transportation process that are generated at
intervals of t a time units each during the transportation process. In what follows,
these intervals are denoted as anticipation horizons. Note that each static problem
instance represents the current system state of the ADFSVRPSTW as described in
Sect. 3.2.1. In order to simplify the following explanations, we designate the tour
plan that is currently in execution as the relevant tour plan. It is denoted as Pτr , where
the index τ denotes the current time at the beginning of the considered anticipation
horizon. Analogously, Pτt defines a theoretical tour plan that is optimized during
this anticipation horizon utilizing a specified solution method. Additionally, Pτbt de-
notes the best theoretical tour plan found during the performed optimization.
At the beginning of each anticipation horizon, the corresponding static problem
instance is generated. In order to consider the concurrency of the tour plan adap-
tation and tour plan execution, the static problem instance at τ is derived from the
future system state which is expected at the end of the current anticipation horizon.
This future system state is attained by pre-simulating Pτr for t a time units. Conse-
quently, after applying the solution method, Pτt and Pτbt are directly implementable
at the end of the respective anticipation horizon. In order to enable a detailed map-
ping of system snapshots, each corresponding static problem instance comprises all
currently known unserviced requests as well as positions and statuses of vehicles.
Since dynamically arriving requests are buffered throughout each anticipation hori-
zon, this problem instance additionally comprises a list of these newly arrived re-
quests. After the pre-simulation that has consumed tτcalc time units is completed, the
remaining time of the current anticipation horizon denoted by t a − tτcalc is available
for optimizing Pτt by the solution method. Clearly, since Pτt contains only deci-
sions that are taken after the elapse of the current anticipation horizon, all decisions
that will be made by Pτr in the current anticipation horizon become unchangeable
at its beginning and thus are executed in the system as planned. Therefore, the as-
signment of a request to a vehicle becomes fixed if service at this request starts
according to Pτr before τ + = τ + t a . Since no uncertainties in travel times or service
times are considered in the RDOPG applications, in what follows, we assume that
the anticipated system state is in agreement with the actual system state at τ + . By
optimizing Pτt throughout the considered anticipation horizon, Pτbt is stored for a
possible subsequent replacement of Pτr . Note that due to the utilization of the pre-
sented pre-simulation concept, all existing tour plans are directly applicable at τ +
and are therefore feasibly interchangeable.
5.2 The Deterministic Real-Time Control Approach 153
Tour plan processing layer simulates the transportation process by executing the current relevant tour plan
Dynamic events Dτ
Queued dynamic events (i.e., requests)
arrived between τ - and τ which are
required to be integrated into the
transportation process at τ
Theoretical plan follows relevant tour Theoretical plan can be changed by the solution method invoked in [τ,τ +)
plan in this anticipation horizon If a new best theoretical plan is found, the relevant tour plan is changed at τ +
Tour plan adaptation layer improves the theoretical plan by applying the solution method
Current anticipation horizon First subsequent anticipation horizon Second subsequent anticipation horizon time
τ τ + ta τ + 2t a τ + 3t a
Fig. 5.1 The utilized real-time control concept adapting the transportation process at τ
The applied real-time control concept is illustrated in Fig. 5.1. The length of the
anticipation horizon t a can be chosen arbitrarily but is constant during the consid-
ered transportation process. Depending on the considered applications, a trade-off
may arise here: While longer anticipation horizons may allow a more comprehen-
sive adaptation by the applied solution method, shorter anticipation horizons can
more directly react to newly arriving requests. In what follows, the applied update
handling which is performed in each anticipation horizon is presented in detail.
In what follows, we describe in detail how tour plans are adapted and selected in
each anticipation horizon of the previously described real-time control concept. In
each anticipation horizon, the applied update handling comprises the following four
steps (see also Fig. 5.2):
1. As mentioned above, since requests that have arrived in the previous anticipation
horizon have only been buffered, all requests of the set Dτ = {i ∈ Rτ |ria > τ − }
with τ − = τ − t a need to be integrated into the three tour plans Pτr , Pτt , and Pτbt .
Therefore, for all new requests in Dτ , travel times from and to all other active
relevant locations (including current vehicle’s positions) are calculated using Di-
jkstra’s algorithm (cf. Dijkstra 1959). This calculated information is used to up-
date the digraph G (see Sect. 5.3.1) with travel time information of the customer
requests in Dτ . After these calculations, the pending requests are subsequently
inserted in a sequence of non-decreasing arrival times into all three tour plans
using a least cost insertion heuristic. Since this least cost insertion can be per-
154 5 A New Deterministic Real-Time Control Approach
Step 1
Update the digraph G
according to the new requests
and vehicle positions [No new requests]
Least-cost insertion of
pending requests into all
three tour plans
Step 2
the three tour plans according to the best
objective function value of all three tour plans
Step 3
Update vehicle positions and corresponding
travel time information in the digraph G
Step 4
Perform the solution method on the
theoretical tour plan for t a - tτcalc time units
formed in zero time, we obtain the set P̃τ = {P̃τr , P̃τt , P̃τbt } of modified tour plans
that are directly applicable in the transportation process at τ .
2. The tour plan of the set P̃τ with the best objective function value is selected as
tour plan Pτr∗ . This tour plan becomes the new relevant tour plan and there-
fore controls the transportation process until time point τ + . Note that we do not
select P̃τbt directly as Pτr∗ because this would not take into account effects of
inserting the pending requests of set Dτ on the objective function value of all
three tour plans in the set P̃τ . Since this selection can also be performed in zero
time, Pτr∗ remains directly applicable at τ .
3. Based on Pτr∗ , the system state at time point τ + is anticipated. This state is com-
puted by pre-simulating all vehicle activities up to τ + according to Pτr∗ . This
updates the vehicle positions and their availability times, i.e., the time points at
which vehicles can react to new orders (see also Sect. 5.3.2.2). Apart from the
resulting anticipated static problem instance at τ + , the removal of all requests,
where service has begun during the pre-simulation, leads to the relevant tour
5.2 The Deterministic Real-Time Control Approach 155
plan Pτr+ applicable at time point τ + . Clearly, in order to adapt the theoretical
tour plan so that it is also applicable at time point τ + , those requests are also re-
moved from P̃τt . The resulting theoretical tour plan is defined as Pτt∗+ and is used
as the initial solution for the solution method. The solution method is a Tabu
Search metaheuristic which will be described in Chap. 7.
Note that by resuming the search process of the Tabu Search procedure from
the solution examined last in the previous anticipation horizon, a larger diversifi-
cation is attained. This is not the case when the search process is always started
using the solution that is currently in execution. However, in case new requests
have arrived (i.e., Dτ = ∅) or in case requests have been serviced in the previ-
ous anticipation horizon, the Tabu Search procedure starts its search directly on
a solution that is equal to Pτr+ using intensifying neighborhood operators. This
methodology is applied since changes in the system state justify the direct appli-
cation of intensifying neighborhood operators on the tour plan Pτr+ .
4. Based on the tour plan Pτr+ , all travel times from the anticipated vehicle positions
at τ + to all other relevant locations are updated using Dijkstra’s algorithm. Note
that only vehicles need to be updated that have changed the current road in the
road network during this anticipation horizon. Otherwise, only their availability
time (see Sect. 5.3.2.2) at the next street crossing needs to be updated. Simi-
lar to step 1, the digraph G is updated according to this calculated travel time
information that will be used in the solution method after the update handling.
At the end of the four steps, the update handling is completed. Note that one
further important aspect for practical applications should be mentioned. Especially
when a large road network is used, time-consuming calculations, due to Dijkstra’s
algorithm in step 4 of the update handling, may occur. As a consequence, the de-
scribed update handling may consume an amount of time that cannot be considered
as zero time in all situations. Hence, the time used for anticipating the new system
situation at τ is measured by tτcalc . After the update handling has been completed at
time point τ + tτcalc , the solution method is executed on Pτt∗+ . Note that the computa-
tional time that is available for the solution method is not equal to t a since the time
needed for the update handling needs to be considered in order to stay in synchro-
nization with the transportation process that is simultaneously executed. Hence, as
mentioned above, the computational time available to the solution method is given
by t a − tτcalc .
After the solution method has been executed, analogous to the previous antici-
pation horizon, the best solution that has been found during the application of the
solution method is stored as Pτbt+ and the tour plan examined last is stored as Pτt + .
These tour plans are utilized in the next anticipation horizon in order to integrate
new requests and to select the relevant tour plan Pτr∗+ that will be executed during
the next anticipation horizon.
156 5 A New Deterministic Real-Time Control Approach
Since new requests arrive during the day, we utilize the following waiting strategy
for idle vehicles in order to increase flexibility for integrating future requests in
the tour plan. It works as follows. If a vehicle has no further requests assigned to
its tour during the day, it waits at its last serviced request location for new requests.
Preliminary computational experiments show that this strategy is superior compared
to an immediate return of the vehicles to the depot. In other words, in the considered
RDOPG applications, computational results showed that it is more advantageous to
keep the vehicles at positions where past requests have arrived than directly sending
the vehicles back to the depot.
In this section, the road network and the derived digraph that models information
regarding the relevant locations of the transportation process are described. After
that, the deterministic dynamic mathematical model that is used to represent each
of the individual problem instances in the proposed real-time control approach is
introduced.
As mentioned in Sect. 3.1.1, a real road network is utilized in order to enable the
real-time control approach to consider more realistic vehicle movements in the road
network. The utilized road network R̃ is defined by R̃ = (Ñ , Ã, t˜) with Ñ and Ã
denoting its nodes and arcs, respectively. While the nodes represent crossings and
road endpoints, the arcs represent the roads. The value t˜(ã) of function t˜ : Ã → R
5.3 The Mathematical Model of Individual Problem Instances 157
describes the travel time in the road network required on an arc ã ∈ Ã. In order
to model the current situation in the transportation network at τ , the digraph G that
maps all relevant locations at τ , i.e., request locations, the depot, and current vehicle
positions, is used. It represents an abstraction layer from the road network R̃ and is
used to provide the information that is required during tour plan adaptation to the
solution method. Specifically, since in the solution method only the total travel times
between relevant locations are required in order to calculate arrival times at relevant
locations and thereby resulting objective function values, no information about the
exact routes that vehicles will take is required to be provided to the solution method.
As mentioned above, the set of known requests at time point τ is defined by Rτ
whereas the set of unserviced requests at τ is defined by RτU = {1, . . . , RU τ }, i.e., all
requests i ∈ Rτ where no service has begun up to τ . Furthermore, K = {1, . . . , K}
represents the set of available homogeneous vehicles.
The digraph is given by G = (N, A). It models the relevant locations, i.e., the
depot location, request locations, and vehicle locations, of the system state at τ . The
set N = {0, . . . , RU
τ + K} is the associated set of nodes and A = (N × N ) the corre-
sponding set of arcs. Node 0 represents the depot which is located at node D p ∈ Ñ
and nodes 1, . . . , RU U
τ correspond to the set of unserviced request locations Rτ at τ .
p
Similar to the depot, it holds that each request i ∈ RτU is located at ri ∈ Ñ , i.e.,
at a crossing or at a road endpoint in the road network. The start location of vehi-
cle k ∈ K is represented by node vk+ = (RU τ + k) of the digraph. This node corre-
p
sponds to the location of vehicle k at τ in the road network defined by node vk ∈ Ñ .
p
Note that if vehicle k is not at a node ñ ∈ Ñ at τ but on an arc ã ∈ Ã, vk represents
the node of the road network that vehicle k will reach next. Furthermore, vkδt repre-
sents the availability time of vehicle k when it is available at its start location vk+ .
This availability time is a time duration relative to τ . Hence, this value is larger
than 0 if the vehicle is busy with traveling on a road or with servicing a request at τ
(see also Sect. 5.3.2.2). In the considered RDOPG applications, the end location of
vehicle k denoted as vk− is always the depot that is represented by node 0 of di-
graph G. We define K + = k∈K vk+ and K − = k∈K vk− . A non-negative value tij
is associated with each arc (i, j ) ∈ A. It represents the time needed for a vehicle
to travel from location i to location j in the road network R̃ on the shortest path.1
With regard to the considered RDOPG applications, shortest paths in terms of least
travel times are sought. Specifically, with pij = (pij 1 , pij 2 , . . . , pij n ) ⊂ Ã repre-
senting the sequence of arcs in R̃ that describe the shortest path from node i to
node j , it holds that tij = a∈pij t˜(a). Note that in practical applications, the short-
est path routing information given by pij can be used in order to route a vehicle to
the location of its next assigned customer request. Specifically, further information
regarding traffic jams and current travel times could be integrated into the short-
est path calculations in the dispatching center and then transmitted to the vehicle’s
1 The shortest path is defined as the path in a weighted graph connecting two given nodes i
and j with the property that the sum of the weights of all the edges is minimized over all such
paths (cf. Sedgewick 1983, p. 413).
158 5 A New Deterministic Real-Time Control Approach
on-board unit (see also Sect. 2.6.3). In the conducted empirical studies, the simula-
tion component utilizes this information to simulate vehicle movements in the road
network (see also Sect. 8.1).
In the proposed real-time control approach, two different types of shortest path
calculations are required. Specifically, while highly detailed information about the
shortest paths is required for routing vehicles in the road network, the solution
method only needs information about total travel times between the relevant lo-
cations as mentioned above. In these calculations, the geographical positions of the
p p
relevant locations in the road network are given by D p , ri (i ∈ RτU ), and vk (k ∈ K).
Studies performed in Ferrucci (2006, p. 86 et seq.) show that it is beneficial to
use Single-Point Shortest-Path (SPSP) calculations for the first type of calculations
and Single-Source Shortest-Path (SSSP) as well as Single-Source Shortest-Path Re-
verse (SSSPR ) calculations for the second type of calculations. Specifically, SPSP,
also denoted as one-to-one shortest paths, calculates the shortest path for a given
source-destination pair while SSSP calculates the shortest paths starting from a
given source to a set of destinations. Moreover, since travel time information is re-
quired between the relevant locations in both travel directions in the solution method
and travel time information may be direction-dependent due to one-way streets,
SSSPR is utilized in order to calculate the shortest paths starting from a given set
of sources to one destination. More information on shortest path calculations can be
found among others in Ahuja et al. (1993, p. 93 et seq.) while details on efficient
SPSP and SSSP implementations in road networks can be found in Zhan (1997),
Zhan and Noon (1998), and Zhan and Noon (2000). Further sophisticated shortest
path calculation methods which are suitable for calculating shortest paths in road
networks are proposed, among others, by Bauer et al. (2008) and Schultes (2008).
In this section, the mathematical model for representing the individual static prob-
lem instances generated from the system snapshot at time τ is introduced. Note that
the problem data of the model is derived from the pre-simulated system state at τ +
in order to consider the concurrency of tour plan execution and tour plan adaptation.
The solution of this model determines the tours of the vehicles in order to service
the currently pending requests so that the value of the considered objective function
is minimized. Since the generated vehicle tours are applied at τ + , they start at the
respective anticipated vehicle positions and take into consideration the anticipated
vehicle status and availability times at this point in time. According to the classi-
fication of Powell (see Sect. 2.5.2.3), the presented model is dynamic since it is
adapted according to the current system state during the execution of the transporta-
tion process. Moreover, the model is deterministic since no stochastic knowledge
about future requests is integrated and the model is only solved on the basis of the
current information that is known with certainty at τ . This model will be extended
to a stochastic dynamic model by integrating stochastic knowledge in Chap. 6. In
5.3 The Mathematical Model of Individual Problem Instances 159
the following, we consider the deterministic dynamic version of the model and its
problem data in more detail.
In the RDOPG applications, customer requests have soft time windows as well as
variable and fixed penalty costs. Each unserviced customer request i ∈ RτU+ is unam-
p
biguously defined by the tuple ri = (ria , rie , ril , ris , riw , ri ). In this tuple, ria denotes
e
the arrival time of request i in the system whereas ri and ril define the earliest and
latest valid start of service without fixed penalty costs denoted by R pen occurring.
Hence, the time period between rie and ril represents the maximum allowed response
time as introduced in the problem description in Sect. 3.1. Since in the RDOPG ap-
plications, each customer request is directly waiting for service when it arrives in
the system, its time window simultaneously opens upon its arrival, i.e., rie is equal
to the arrival time ria . Note that both these parameters may have different values
for dummy customer requests which will be introduced in Chap. 6. The customer
inconvenience is modeled by variable penalty costs which start at rie . The time re-
quired to service a request i at its corresponding customer location is defined by
the service time denoted by parameter ris . As mentioned in Sect. 3.1, since the max-
imum allowed response time as well as the service time are assumed to be equal
for all requests in the considered example application given by the subsequent de-
livery of newspapers, we define ∀i ∈ RτU+ : ris = R st , ril = rie + R mrt . Parameter riw
determines the weight factor with which the request is considered in the objective
p
function. Finally, ri determines the aforementioned location of the request in the
road network. Since all requests are located at a node in the road network, it holds
p
that ri ∈ Ñ ∀i ∈ RτU+ .
above, parameter vk+ defines the start location of vehicle k in the digraph repre-
sented by node (RU τ+
+ k) whereas vk− defines the end location which is equal to the
p
depot location for all vehicles. Parameter vk ∈ Ñ defines the node in the road net-
work which corresponds to the start location of vehicle k. Moreover, relative to τ + ,
p
parameter vkδt determines the availability time of vehicle k at vk . In what follows,
+
we introduce how three vehicle statuses that are possible at τ are transformed into
p
different values of the parameters vk and vkδt :
1. Vehicle k is busy and drives to its next request: As mentioned in the problem
description in Sect. 3.1.4, the first request may be reassigned due to the allowed
vehicle en-route diversion. Therefore, the current destination of a vehicle may be
changed. However, note that such a change is only possible when the vehicle has
reached a node in the road network, i.e., a road junction or road end point ñ ∈ Ñ .
160 5 A New Deterministic Real-Time Control Approach
p
Thus, vk represents the node in the road network that the vehicle will reach next.
Moreover, τ + + vkδt is defined as the point in time when vehicle k arrives at
p
node vk .
2. Vehicle k is busy and services a request: Assuming that vehicle k is servicing
request i at its location ri ∈ N at time point τ + and let x be the remaining service
p
time of request i at τ + . Then, it holds that vk = ri and vkδt = x since the vehicle
p p
In this section, we describe the model which is utilized to represent the indi-
vidual problem instances which occur during the execution of the transporta-
tion process. In the model, binary decision variables of set X = {xki s } (k ∈ K,
d } (k ∈ K, i ∈ {R U ∪ K + }, j ∈ {R U ∪ K − }, i = j ) define request-
i ∈ RτU+ ) ∪ {xkij τ+ τ+
vehicle assignments as well as vehicle travel activities which form the tours of the
vehicles. Specifically, for each vehicle k ∈ K, xki
s is 1 if and only if vehicle k ser-
vices request i ∈ Rτ + while xkij is 1 if vehicle k directly drives from the relevant
U d
location i to the relevant location j and 0 otherwise. Note that this formulation of
binary decision variables relates to the three-index vehicle flow formulation pre-
sented for the CVRP in Sect. 2.3.2. The variable set Y = {yia } ∪ {yis } determines the
time assignments of the requests. For each request i ∈ RτU+ , yia denotes the arrival
time of the assigned vehicle at request i and yis the start time of service at request i.
Note that the variable set Y depends on set X so that the solution of the model is
completely defined by set X.
Based on these definitions, each static problem instance occurring in the trans-
portation process of the considered RDOPG applications can be modeled as follows:
∀i ∈ RτU+ : s
xki =1 (5.1)
k∈K
∀k ∈ K, i ∈ RτU+ : d
xkj i=
d
xkij = xki
s
(5.2)
j ∈{vk+ ∪R U+ } j ∈{R U+ ∪vk− }
τ τ
∀k ∈ K: d
xkv + =
j
d
xkiv − =1 (5.3)
k k
j ∈{R U+ ∪vk− } i∈{vk+ ∪R U+ }
τ τ
∀i ∈ RτU+ : yis = max rie , yia (5.4)
5.3 The Mathematical Model of Individual Problem Instances 161
∀i, j ∈ RτU+ , k ∈ K: d
xkij = 1 ⇒ yja = yis + ris + tij (5.5)
+
∀j ∈ RτU+ , k ∈ K: d
xkv + = 1 ⇒ yj = τ
j
a
+ vkδt + tv + j (5.6)
k k
As introduced in Sect. 3.1, the objective function pursues the minimization of the
total customer inconvenience. This total customer inconvenience consists of vari-
able and fixed inconvenience costs and is operationalized by a function of request
response times (see Sect. 2.4.12.7) as well as fixed lateness costs. As defined above,
the point in time when service begins at request i is defined as yis . We denote the
response time of each request i ∈ RτU+ as tires defined by tires = yis − rie . Since each
request i ∈ RτU+ has to be serviced with certainty, each of these requests obtains
the same weight factor riw by which it is weighted in the objective function. For
these requests that already have arrived in the system, this weight factor is set to 1.
When exceeding the predefined maximum allowed response time R mrt , a prohibitive
increase of the customer inconvenience occurs due to the penalty costs that are de-
fined by R pen . Utilizing the specified response time tires , the objective function that
is pursued in the model of the considered RDOPG applications is defined by
min z = riw · F tires + R pen · tires − R mrt
U
i∈R
τ+ Variable customer Lateness penalty costs
inconvenience (i.e., lateness inconvenience)
with the function (x) = 1 if x > 0 and 0 otherwise. As can be seen, the primary
objective is to avoid a late service of customer requests, i.e., all customers should be
serviced within their maximum allowed response time. Furthermore, the secondary
objective is to minimize the total variable customer inconvenience which depends
on the required request response times. As mentioned in Sect. 3.1, the effects of a
linear and a quadratic customer inconvenience increase are assessed in the RDOPG
applications. Therefore, F is defined either as a linear or as a quadratic customer
inconvenience function.
162 5 A New Deterministic Real-Time Control Approach
101.0
Lateness penalty R pen
1.0
Request arrival
linear2X
quadratic
0.0
Response time
As illustrated in Fig. 5.3, both customer inconvenience functions have the same
customer inconvenience contribution of 1.0 at the maximum allowed response time
at R mrt whereas further increase, i.e., a violation of this maximum allowed response
time, are penalized by R pen . The prohibitive effect of this penalization is realized
by the significantly higher value of these lateness penalty costs in comparison to
the customer inconvenience values. The presented objective functions are used in
the real-time control approach for coordinating the transportation process during its
execution. In the computational results presented in Chap. 8, the lateness penalty
costs are separately considered by specifying the number of late customer requests.
Hence, the presented improvements which were attained refer to the variable cus-
tomer inconvenience of the objective function.
0.0007
0.0006
Marginal increase per second
0.0005
0.0004
0.0003
0.0002
linear2X
0.0001
quadratic
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
Response time [seconds]
Fig. 5.4 Marginal increase in variable customer inconvenience using a maximum request response
time of one hour
According to the general classification of real-time control concepts which has been
introduced in Sect. 5.1, the proposed real-time control concept can be characterized
as follows:
1. The adaptation-frequency is implemented by using a continuous concept. Specif-
ically, in time intervals of equal length which is defined by the anticipation hori-
zon t a , the transportation process is adapted by integrating intermediately ar-
riving dynamic events into consecutive problem instances. Hence, the complete
time which is available during the execution of the transportation process is used
for applying the solution method.
2. The adaptation-synchrony is implemented by a process priority since the trans-
portation process cannot be interrupted while the tour plan adaptations are per-
formed by the Tabu Search metaheuristic. Since this proposed solution method
consumes an amount of computational time which cannot be considered as
zero time, changes in the transportation process which occur during the adap-
164 5 A New Deterministic Real-Time Control Approach
Fig. 5.5 Integration of the real-time control approach into RDOPG applications
considered layers, the real-time control approach supplies one initial tour plan be-
fore the execution of the transportation process (operative layer) and repeatedly pro-
vides adaptations to the relevant tour plan during the execution of the transportation
process (real-time control layer).
5.6 Summary
In this chapter, the real-time control approach which is utilized for coordinating the
transportation process of RDOPG applications was described. Based on a determin-
istic real-time control approach proposed by Bock (2010), the proposed real-time
control approach solves the transportation process during its execution by dividing
the dynamic problem in individual problem instances. A new problem instance is
generated in time intervals of a specified length defined by the anticipation hori-
zon. New requests which occur during the transportation process are buffered until
the generation of the next problem instance. Hence, each problem instance can be
seen as a static problem instance which is adapted by the developed solution method
which will be presented in Chap. 7. Since the solution method consumes a time pe-
riod which cannot be considered as zero time for adapting the tour plan and since
the transportation process continues its execution during the adaptation, the concur-
rency of transportation process execution and adaptation has to be considered. For
this purpose, before the adaptation, the state of each static problem instance at the
end of the current anticipation horizon is anticipated so that the calculated solution
is directly applicable in the transportation process after the adaptation is complete.
The update handling which is used for integrating newly arrived requests and gener-
ating the individual static problem instances was presented in detail. By making use
of an idle vehicle waiting strategy, idle vehicles wait for further arriving requests
at their last serviced request location instead of directly traveling back to the de-
pot. Moreover, vehicles with pending requests directly drive to their next assigned
request. Furthermore, the mathematical model used to represent the individual prob-
lem instances in the real-time control approach was formulated including constraints
which need to be regarded in the considered RDOPG applications. In this mathe-
matical formulation, both evaluated objective functions comprising a linear and a
quadratic evolution of customer inconvenience were introduced. After the descrip-
tion of the utilized real-time control approach, it was categorized according to the
classification of real-time control approaches proposed in Bock (2004, p. 67 et seq.)
which was introduced at the beginning of the chapter. Since the proposed real-time
control approach does not make use of stochastic knowledge, it is a deterministic
real-time control approach and therefore the utilized mathematical model is a de-
terministic dynamic model. The proposed deterministic real-time control approach
will be extended to a pro-active real-time control approach in the next chapter.
Chapter 6
A New Forecasting Approach for Generating
Stochastic Knowledge from Past Request
Information and Utilizing the Stochastic
Knowledge
The real-time control approach presented in the previous chapter utilizes a determin-
istic dynamic model which has been introduced in Sect. 5.3.2. Apart from the idle
vehicle waiting strategy (see Sect. 5.2.4) no methods for providing an increased flex-
ibility for integrating dynamically arriving requests are utilized in this real-time con-
trol approach. Hence, according to the classification in Sect. 2.5.3.2.2, this real-time
control approach is a deterministic real-time control approach which only adapts
the tour plan according to problem data known with certainty. Specifically, although
past request information is available (see Sect. 3.1) out of which stochastic knowl-
edge can be generated, this deterministic real-time control approach does not make
use of it. Therefore, each time a static problem instance is solved, the performed
adaptations do not take into account the fact that further changes in the relevant
information are likely to occur during the execution of the transportation process.
Consequently, tour plans generated by the deterministic real-time control approach
could in many cases be improved in order to service additionally arriving requests
more efficiently, i.e., with lower response times. This is especially true when newly
arriving requests are located far away from current vehicle positions which happens
when previous requests have only arrived in other regions of the considered ser-
vice area. This may occur if changing request arrival rates in the individual regions
during the planning horizon exist in the considered application.
In order to take advantage of the available past request information, we propose
new forecasting methods for generating and integrating stochastic knowledge into
the deterministic real-time control approach in this chapter. By using these methods,
the stochastic knowledge is generated from the available past request information,
i.e., from request arrivals observed on elapsed working days. The generated stochas-
tic knowledge is integrated into the real-time control approach in order to implement
the three pro-active strategies mentioned in Sect. 4.3:
• Relocation strategy: By using this strategy, vehicles can be relocated to subre-
gions, in which future requests are likely to arrive, at suitable time points and
can be kept there for a specified amount of time. Such promising regions in the
service area are automatically derived from the available request information by
the proposed forecasting methods. Note that keeping vehicles in promising sub-
regions after relocation activities have been performed also involves the use of a
waiting strategy which is described next.
• Waiting strategy: When a vehicle has been relocated to a promising subregion
or is already located in such an area, a decision has to be made about how long
this vehicle will be kept there in order to wait for expected future requests. For
this purpose, a maximum value of this amount of time is defined by the generated
stochastic knowledge. Furthermore, the real-time control approach can dynami-
cally determine to keep vehicles for a shorter amount of time in these subregions
according to the current request situation during the transportation process. Com-
parable to the idle vehicle waiting strategy applied in the deterministic real-time
control approach (see Sect. 5.2.4), idle vehicles with no assigned relocation ac-
tivities wait at their last serviced request location.
• Request assignment strategy: In addition to the previous two strategies which
are primarily applied to improve the utilization of idle vehicles, the available
stochastic knowledge is also directly integrated into the tour plan adaptation pro-
cess. Specifically, since request assignments to vehicles affect future positions of
the vehicles, resulting effects on the response times and customer inconvenience
values of expected future requests are anticipated and directly considered during
tour plan adaptations.
According to our classification in Sect. 2.5.3.2.2, using these pro-active strate-
gies extends the deterministic real-time control approach to a pro-active real-time
control approach. The general aim of the pro-active real-time control approach is to
enable earlier service of expected future requests by efficiently utilizing the available
fleet of vehicles according to the expected requests. This is especially beneficial in
the considered RDOPG applications in which the pursued objective solely consists
of minimizing customer inconvenience. Therefore, an earlier service of pending re-
quests is likely to increase the solution quality significantly.
In order to enable relocation and waiting activities of vehicles according to ex-
pected future requests, their temporal and spatial occurrence has to be forecasted.
For this purpose, we propose a new forecasting method for generating stochas-
tic knowledge from the available past request information. The integration of the
stochastic knowledge into the real-time control approach supports the generation
of tour plans with an increased flexibility for integrating expected future requests
which offers possibilities to increase the solution quality of generated tour plans.
By using the stochastic knowledge during the adaptation of the individual prob-
lem instances, the deterministic dynamic model (see Sect. 5.3.2.3) is extended to a
stochastic dynamic model.
In what follows, the proposed approaches for generating and integrating stochas-
tic knowledge into the real-time control approach are described. We first describe
the general ideas that are used for integrating stochastic knowledge into the pro-
posed real-time control approach. Since the stochastic knowledge is integrated into
the pro-active real-time control approach by utilizing dummy customers, we present
how the generation of dummy customers using segment-based clustering is carried
6.1 Integrating Stochastic Knowledge into the Real-Time Control Approach 169
out by analyzing the available past request information. Finally, methods for han-
dling dummy customers in the pro-active real-time control approach during the ex-
ecution of the transportation process are presented.
• Location and service time: In contrast to real requests that have a specific lo-
cation in the road network, a dummy customer guides a vehicle to the spatial
barycenter of a promising subregion denoted as a request-likely area. As men-
tioned in Sect. 3.1.3, a request-likely area represents a temporally and spatially
defined area in which future requests are expected. Since the locations of requests
that are expected to arrive in a request-likely area are presumably different from
its spatial barycenter, the travel time which the assigned vehicle requires from the
barycenter to the location of the expected future requests needs to be considered.
Hence, dummy customers provide information about the estimated total amount
of time that a vehicle requires within a request-likely area. For each request-likely
area, this amount of time is individually determined by the total sum of travel and
service times required to fulfill all expected future requests represented by the
respective dummy customer of the request-likely area. The service time of the
corresponding dummy customer is set to this calculated time period.
Note that since the service time represents the estimated amount of time that a
vehicle will require for servicing the expected requests in a request-likely area, the
integration of dummy customers into the transportation process makes it possible
to have a more foresighted tour plan generation. Specifically, the service time of
a dummy customer acts as a buffer that increases the robustness of generated tour
plans which may lead to better results. Due to this increased robustness of the
tour plans, substantial tour modifications under high time pressure become less
likely and therefore tour plans with a high solution quality can be more frequently
implemented as planned. Moreover, actively guiding vehicles to request-likely ar-
eas before real requests arrive there enables an earlier service of these requests.
Therefore, the utilization of the generated stochastic knowledge provides the de-
sired increased flexibility for integrating expected future requests.
• Uncertainty of occurrence: As mentioned in Sect. 5.3.2.4, each request i that is
known with certainty is considered in the objective function with a weight factor
of riw = 1. In contrast, a dummy customer i represents the expected arrival of
future requests in the corresponding request-likely area with some uncertainty.
Therefore, it is considered in the objective function with a weight factor riw < 1
which depends on the probability that at least one real request will actually arrive
in the assigned request-likely area. As an advantage, this enables the pro-active
real-time control approach to decide, depending on the current pending request
situation, if and for how long each vehicle should be kept in a request-likely area.
With regard to the considered objective function, this flexible vehicle utilization
is more advantageous compared to defining fixed rules.
• Parameter updating: In contrast to known requests that are removed from the
system after service at their request location is completed, dummy customers
represent place-holders for expected future requests. Since dummy customers are
only assigned to a request-likely area which is temporally restricted, dummy cus-
tomers need to be updated during the transportation process. Specifically, as time
passes by during the execution of the transportation process, the probability that
further requests will arrive in the corresponding request-likely area of a dummy
customer decreases. Hence, the dummy customer parameters representing the ex-
pected service time and the weight factor need to be dynamically updated during
6.2 Generation of Dummy Customers Using Segment-Based Clustering 171
In order to derive reliable information about expected future requests, the developed
forecasting methods determine appropriate time-space Poisson processes by ana-
lyzing the available past request information. For this purpose, the temporal and
spatial area of the considered service area during the considered planning hori-
zon is divided into subareas which are further temporally divided into segments.
According to Fig. 6.1, each segment s ∈ S has the same predetermined quadratic
spatial (DCse ∈ R2 ) as well as a temporal (DCte ∈ R) extension. Note that all seg-
ments are disjoint and cover the entire considered service area and planning hori-
zon. For each segment s ∈ S, expected request arrivals in s are modeled by a non-
homogeneous time-space Poisson process ps . As mentioned above, it is assumed
that request arrival rates remain constant from day to day. Therefore, the corre-
sponding rate parameter λ(ps ) is calculated by the average number of past request
arrivals in s over the last nf working days. Clearly, since ps represents the expected
request arrivals in segment s each day, ps is only considered during segment s.
Hence, the time unit of λ(ps ) is given by DCte .
Preliminary computational experiments indicated that defining the spatial and
temporal extension of a segment by DCse × DCte = (2.5 kilometers × 2.5 kilo-
meters) × 1 minute provides a reasonable setting for the considered RDOPG ap-
plication (see also Sect. 8.2.1). The division of the considered service area into
6.2 Generation of Dummy Customers Using Segment-Based Clustering 173
y y
y
Time
x x
Considered service area Dividing the area Dividing each subarea into segments
into subareas segments have a spatial and a temporal dimension
Fig. 6.1 Dividing the service area into subareas and segments
segments with such a highly detailed time resolution allows for a precise tempo-
ral mapping of request arrival rates but usually leads to low individual segment
rate parameter values λ(ps ), s ∈ S. In order to allow more reliable forecasts of ex-
pected future requests, adjacent segments are combined into clusters modeled by
compound Poisson processes. Specifically, n non-homogeneous time-space Pois-
son processes ps , s ∈ S ⊂ S with |S | = n are combined into a new compound
Poisson process pS = s∈S ps with rate parameter λ(pS∗ ) = s∈S λ(ps ). Note
∗
that λ(pS∗ ) represents the total number of expected requests in the segments s ∈ S
on one day. Hence, the time unit of λ(pS∗ ) is defined by T · DCte with T denot-
ing the temporal height of pS∗ , i.e., the number of consecutive temporal levels from
which segments s ∈ S are combined in pS∗ . This combination of adjacent segments
is performed for the purpose of pS∗ reaching a rate parameter which is sufficiently
high, thereby justifying the assumption that real requests will actually arrive within
the generated cluster. Such a cluster represents the aforementioned request-likely
area.
In order to generate clusters with a specified minimum forecasting precision and
a minimum reliability of the occurrence of at least one real request in the cluster
during the execution of the transportation process, adjacent segments are assigned
to a cluster ctemp so that the following three requirements are met:
(i) Appropriate shape and extension: Segments are combined so that the clus-
ter ctemp is a three-dimensional convex area which represents the aforemen-
tioned request-likely area. The assigned segments do not exceed a predefined
maximum spatial and temporal extension DCmse and DCmte , respectively.
(ii) Minimum occurrence probability: The sum of the rate parameter values of
the segments s ∈ Sctemp which are assigned to ctemp reaches a defined minimum
score DCminλ , i.e., λ(ctemp ) = λ(pS∗c ) ≥ DCminλ .
temp
(iii) Suitable request distribution and Poisson quality: Both these quality aspects
are described later on.
Preliminary tests have revealed that clusters of the desired quality defined by the
three requirements above cannot be generated by applying the well-known k-means
algorithm (cf. MacQueen 1967). Specifically, k-means requires the number of clus-
ters that shall be generated. However, for generating stochastic knowledge in our
application, this is a restrictive and inappropriate requirement since the number of
174 6 A New Forecasting Approach for Generating Stochastic Knowledge
3D view
of cluster
base and cluster base has base has base has base has
extension are not 1 segment 2 segments, 2 segments, 4 segments
controllable at all vertical horizontal
Fig. 6.2 The k-means clustering algorithm and the new proposed cluster generation approach with
different convex bases
y y y y
x x x x
Temporal levels = 1 Temporal levels = 2 Temporal levels = 3 Temporal levels = 4
Fig. 6.3 Steps of the cluster generation approach generating one valid cluster using a base con-
sisting of four segments
clusters that can be generated depends on the used clustering method itself and
the structural quality of the available past request information. Moreover, accord-
ing to requirement (i), a generated cluster is only useful if it represents a convex
area and its spatial and temporal extensions do not exceed certain limits. This re-
quirement cannot be controlled in the k-means algorithm. Additionally, clusters
generated by k-means are rarely compact and frequently irregular (see Fig. 6.2).
Therefore, we have developed a new cluster generation method that does not have
the above-mentioned disadvantages.
Our proposed clustering approach works in two phases. It starts by generating
all valid clusters that meet the three requirements mentioned above. In the second
phase, the maximum set of non-overlapping clusters is determined. In order to gen-
erate all valid clusters in the first phase, a new cluster is iteratively generated by
starting from all possible bases. Such a base comprises either 1, 2, or 4 segments
that are adjacently located at the same temporal level (see again Fig. 6.2) and to-
gether form a convex cluster ctemp with a temporal height of one segment. Note that
only bases are considered whose sum of assigned rate parameters is larger than 0.
Note that the definition of these bases provides a compact spatial cluster shape
that guarantees the fulfillment of the convexity and the maximum spatial exten-
sion in requirement (i). In order to simultaneously fulfill requirement (ii), segments
located at the successive temporal levels are iteratively inserted into ctemp (see
Fig. 6.3). This is repeated until the calculated rate parameter λ(ctemp ) is at least
DCminλ or the temporal height of ctemp exceeds DCmte . In the latter case, ctemp
is discarded, since it violates the maximum temporal extension in requirement (i).
Otherwise, if ctemp fulfills both requirements, the additional quality criteria of re-
quirement (iii) are checked by conducting the following two steps:
6.2 Generation of Dummy Customers Using Segment-Based Clustering 175
1. As mentioned above, real requests which arrive in a cluster are likely to have
a location which is different from the corresponding dummy customer location.
Hence, a vehicle currently positioned at the dummy customer location is required
to perform a certain detour which consumes additional time in order to reach
the real request. If the expected detour is too large, positive effects of using a
dummy customer are likely to disappear. Therefore, the quality of clusters with
regard to the expected travel time for such detour activities is assessed. For this
purpose, a suitable location for the dummy customer in ctemp is derived. The spa-
tial barycenter of the past requests that have been observed within ctemp over the
last nf working days is calculated and mapped on the road network by determin-
ing the closest located node nctemp . Since this node may be positioned within an
area consisting of roads with a low speed limit, it is relocated to a node that fulfills
the following two requirements: First, it is located within a maximum predefined
travel time radius DCradiusTT of nctemp . Second, in order to provide a reasonable
road connection, it is located at a road of a minimum desired road class where
lower road classes denote roads with higher speed limits. This node called nctemp
is determined by conducting a Dijkstra search that starts at nctemp and is limited
by the parameter DCradiusTT . Note that such a node may not exist in the consid-
ered radius. In this case, the closest node with minimum road class (i.e., largest
speed limit) is determined. The node nctemp represents the potential location of
the dummy customer assigned to ctemp . After nctemp is calculated, the average
avgTT
travel time ctemp from nctemp to all past requests observed within ctemp over
avgTT
the last nf working days is calculated. If ctemp exceeds a predefined maximum
average travel time DCmaxAvgTT , ctemp is discarded since the estimated detour
in ctemp is too large to provide a reliable forecast for an efficient positioning of
the assigned vehicle.
2. As mentioned above, we assume in our forecasting method that request arrivals
can be modeled by non-homogeneous time-space Poisson processes whose rate
parameters are constant from day to day. In order to satisfy this assumption to a
degree which is practically reasonable,1 the quality of ctemp is analyzed. Specif-
ically, the three requirements of Poisson processes (see Sect. 6.2) are considered
for each cluster ctemp as follows. While requirement (a) is straightforward, re-
quirement (b) is explicitly checked by applying Pearson’s Chi-Square Goodness-
of-Fit test (cf. Kvam and Vidakovic 2007, p. 155 et seq.). Using this test it is
checked whether there exist significant deviations between the number of ac-
tual customer request arrivals in ctemp over the considered nf working days and
those that are expected according to the Poisson distribution with rate parame-
ter λ(ctemp ).
In general, the Chi-Square Goodness-of-Fit test is applied to test the null
hypothesis H0 : FX (x) = F0 (x) where FX (x) is the observed sample X =
1 Asnoted by Larson and Odoni (1981, p. 194), almost any practical system has a non-perfect de-
gree of conformity with the postulates of the Poisson process. Hence, a trade-off between accuracy
and insights possible by utilizing the Poisson model has to be found.
176 6 A New Forecasting Approach for Generating Stochastic Knowledge
r
(ni − npi )2
X =
2
npi
i=1
If both steps have been successfully completed, the cluster ctemp fulfills the de-
manded quality criteria and is therefore added to the set of valid clusters denoted
by C. Furthermore, request parameter values of the corresponding dummy customer
request of ctemp are calculated. The dummy customer request i belonging to ctemp
gets the weight riw defined by:
This value corresponds to the probability that at least one request will arrive in ctemp .
Moreover, the service time ris of dummy customer i is defined by:
avgTT
ris = R st + ctemp · λ(ctemp )
As mentioned above, ris is set to the sum of service and travel times that the assigned
vehicle is estimated to require for servicing all expected requests in ctemp .
Note that for each base (see Fig. 6.2) on which valid clusters can be generated,
our clustering method generates the valid cluster with the smallest temporal height.
Since generating such precise clusters allows for producing two temporally small
clusters instead of a large one, two dummy customers can also be created. This
is advantageous since it increases the flexibility of the pro-active real-time control
approach by allowing to assign the integrated stochastic knowledge to different ve-
hicles.
178 6 A New Forecasting Approach for Generating Stochastic Knowledge
After generating all valid clusters, the clusters which are integrated as stochastic
knowledge into the transportation process have to be selected. In order to integrate
as much stochastic knowledge as possible, it is pursued to select the maximum num-
ber of clusters that do not overlap from the set C. For this purpose, the following
Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) problem is solved. The set SC ⊆ S comprises
all segments which are assigned to clusters of the set C. The binary parameter cis
is set to 1 if and only if cluster i ∈ C contains segment s ∈ SC . Moreover, parame-
ter cistartTL denotes the temporal level at which cluster ci starts. The binary decision
variable xi is 1 if and only if cluster i ∈ C is selected, 0 otherwise. Furthermore, pa-
rameter M is a big number. Using these definitions, the cluster selection procedure
is formulated as follows:
max z = M · xi − cistartTL · xi s.t. (6.1)
i∈C
∀s ∈ SC : cis · xi ≤ 1 (6.2)
i∈C
xi ≤ C max (6.3)
i∈C
The primary goal of the hierarchical objective function (6.1) is the maximization of
the number of selected clusters. Since this also maximizes the number of dummy
customers that are integrated in the tour plan, it ensures that the maximum stochas-
tic knowledge generatable by our forecasting approach is utilized. The secondary
goal is to start clusters at the earliest point in time in order to support an earlier
service of the requests that are expected in the identified request-likely areas. This
also supports the pursued aim of guiding the vehicles into request-likely areas at
the right time. Constraints (6.2) ensure that all segments s ∈ SC are assigned to, at
most, one cluster i ∈ C. Constraint (6.3) imposes a theoretical upper bound on the
number of clusters that can be selected. Note that this restriction was defined for
technical reasons; since it allows the MIP solver to generate tighter bounds during
the examination process which enables a faster solution process of the considered
cluster selection problem. For the computational experiments, this bound is initially
set to:
s∈SC λ(ps )
C max
=
DCminλ
After solving the cluster selection problem, for each selected cluster a dummy cus-
tomer with the parameter settings defined above is added to the set of initial requests.
These dummy customer requests are integrated into the initial tour plan which is
constructed before the execution of the transportation process. This is described in
Sect. 7.4.
6.3 Handling Dummy Customers in the Pro-Active Real-Time Control Approach 179
As mentioned in Sect. 6.1, request-likely areas are only present for a specific time
period during the execution of the transportation process. Hence, the proposed uti-
lization of stochastic knowledge in the real-time control approach requires the up-
dating of specific dummy customer parameters and appropriate actions during the
transportation process. In what follows, we describe in detail the performed dy-
namic parameter updating during the transportation process. This is followed by
the presentation of the extended vehicle scheduling strategy with regard to dummy
customers. Specifically, if a dummy customer is the next request in the tour of a
vehicle, it is advantageous to determine its departure according to the start of the
dummy customer’s time window. Finally, an extended vehicle waiting strategy us-
ing dummy customer information is proposed.
n=1
time
0 ci start(IJ+) ci end
n=4
n=3
n=2
n=1
Fig. 6.4 Average arrival time of the first request when n request arrivals occur in cluster ci
The expected arrival time of the first request in cluster ci is derived by determin-
ing the average arrival time of the first request in all scenarios with 1, 2, . . . , ∞
requests that arrive in the remaining time period of cluster ci . The calculation of
this average arrival time is described in what follows. Due to the assumed proper-
ties of Poisson processes (see Sect. 6.2), request arrivals are on average uniformly
distributed over the time period of cluster ci . Hence, as illustrated in Fig. 6.4,
when n > 0 requests arrive in cluster ci , the remaining time period of cluster ci
is divided into n + 1 intervals of equal length so that the average arrival time of
the first request, relative to the beginning of cluster ci , is n+1 1
· (ciend − cistart (τ + )).
This time point is multiplied by the probability PSλ(ci ,τ + ) (n) which represents the
probability that exactly n requests will arrive in cluster ci . The resulting values
for all n ∈ {1, 2, . . . , ∞} are summed up and divided by the probability that at
least one request will arrive in cluster ci . By adding the current start time point
cistart (τ + ) of cluster ci , the expected arrival time of the first request in cluster ci is
determined (see (6.4)).
6.3 Handling Dummy Customers in the Pro-Active Real-Time Control Approach 181
• Weight factor (riw ): For each dummy customer i, the weight factor riw is updated
according to the current remaining probability at τ + that at least one more request
will arrive in cluster ci . Therefore, for each dummy customer i, this probability
can be calculated by:
riw τ + = P (X ≥ 1) = 1 − PSλ(ci ,τ + ) (0)
Furthermore, since dummy customers are placeholders for expected future real re-
quests, dummy customers are not serviced. Hence, the time point when a dummy
customer is removed from the tour plan has to be defined. In our approach, a dummy
customer is removed from the set of unserviced requests RτU+ when it becomes un-
likely that further requests will occur in the considered request-likely area defined
by cluster ci . This time point denoted as tcrem
i
is defined by the time when λ(ci , τ + )
becomes smaller than a predefined minimum threshold DCλrem . Note that since tcrem i
is independent of dynamic events, it can be calculated offline before tour plan exe-
cution. Hence, the point in time when each dummy customer is removed from the
tour plan during the transportation process is exactly defined before the execution
of the transportation process.
182 6 A New Forecasting Approach for Generating Stochastic Knowledge
During the execution of the transportation process, situations may occur in which a
dummy customer is scheduled as the next request of a vehicle tour but its service is
planned in the far future due to a much later opening of its time window. Using the
vehicle scheduling strategy presented in Sect. 5.2.3, the vehicle would nevertheless
immediately drive to the dummy customer i and wait there for a much longer time
than is intended by the dummy customer. In contrast to a scenario where the current
transportation process execution time τ is after the time point cistart and therefore
placing an idle vehicle in the corresponding request-likely area is reasonable, this
could lead to unwanted scenarios. For instance, vehicles are guided to remotely lo-
cated areas much too early and are therefore not directly available for intermediately
arriving requests in more central regions.
In order to deal with this issue, an extended vehicle scheduling strategy is applied.
Specifically, if a vehicle’s next request is a dummy customer i, the vehicle waits
at its current position as long as the difference between the current transportation
execution time to cistart is larger than the travel time that is needed to reach the
dummy customer i. This is performed because a visit to dummy customer i might
also be useful in the interval [cistart , rie ) since requests are also expected to occur
with a certain probability before the expected arrival time of the next request in the
cluster ci denoted by rie .
6.4 Summary
In this chapter, a new forecasting approach was presented in order to extend the
deterministic real-time control approach to a pro-active real-time control approach.
The proposed forecasting approach makes it possible to generate stochastic knowl-
edge out of the available past request information. After its generation, the stochas-
tic knowledge is integrated into the real-time control approach by using dummy
customers. In contrast to real requests, dummy customers are used to guide vehi-
cles into request-likely areas in which future requests are expected to occur with a
high probability according to the available stochastic knowledge. The generation of
stochastic knowledge is performed by partitioning the considered service area into
subareas and segments. For each of these segments, request arrivals are modeled by
a time-space Poisson process whose rate parameter is calculated by analyzing the
number of request arrivals in the respective segment on the considered past working
days. Afterwards, dummy customers are created by aggregating segments to clus-
ters that fulfill certain quality criteria, for example that one or more requests actually
arrive in place of a dummy customer with a minimum specified probability. In order
to check the assumption that the number of request arrivals in the segments can be
modeled by Poisson processes, the likelihood that past request arrivals which are
observed in each generated cluster follow a Poisson distribution is evaluated. If this
is too unlikely, the cluster is discarded. In order to generate as many valid dummy
customers as possible, an exact two-step solution method was presented. In the first
step, all valid clusters are generated while in the second step the maximum number
of non-overlapping clusters is selected by making use of an MIP solver. Moreover,
the methods by which the deterministic real-time control approach is extended in
order to integrate and handle dummy customers were described. This includes how
relevant parameters of dummy customers are updated during the execution of the
transportation process and how it is decided when dummy customers are to be re-
moved from further consideration. Furthermore, the extension of the deterministic
real-time control approach included the introduction of an extended vehicle schedul-
ing strategy. This strategy makes a vehicle wait at its current position if its next as-
signed request is a dummy customer and if its departure at the current time in the
transportation process would otherwise make the vehicle arrive earlier than desired
at the dummy customer’s location.
Chapter 7
The Proposed Tabu Search Solution Method
In this chapter, the developed solution method which is utilized to solve individual
problem instances that occur during the execution of the transportation process is
presented. This solution method is a specific stage-based Tabu Search metaheuris-
tic. In order to efficiently integrate intensification and diversification aspects into the
enumeration process, the Tabu Search procedure switches between different stages
that control the currently applied neighborhood operator. In each iteration, depend-
ing on the current stage, a neighborhood operator to be applied is deterministically
selected. If a defined number of iterations has been performed without finding a new
best solution, the Tabu Search algorithm switches into the next higher stage in order
to continue the search with a different neighborhood operator. Neighborhood oper-
ators on lower stages intensify the search in direct vicinity of the current solution,
whereas higher stages apply more diversifying neighborhood operators. If a new
best solution is found, the search returns to the first stage.
As mentioned in Sect. 5.2.1, a static problem instance that is adapted during a run
of the solution method is not modified by dynamic requests that intermediately occur
in the transportation process since these events are buffered until the generation of
the next static problem instance. Therefore, each adaptation of the solution method
is similar to solving a static routing problem. In order to support the approach to
enable a continuous optimization over static problem instances, an appropriate tabu
list structure is developed. In the static problem instance generated at τ , the Tabu
Search solution method is applied for t a − tτcalc time units. After the execution of
the solution method, the tour plans Pτbt+ and Pτt + , i.e., the best and the last tour plan
found during the search process, are generated. Hence, since the computational time
that is available for the solution method is temporally restricted, different concepts
for efficiently computing the objective function are utilized in order to speed up the
solution process.
In this chapter, an introduction to Tabu Search by describing general concepts
of the implemented solution method is given. Specifically, basic concepts of this
metaheuristic are explained as well as the way a tour plan is represented in the de-
veloped solution method. Moreover, it is illustrated how a tour plan is modified by
the application of the neighborhood operators and how the objective function value
In the real-time control approach that is used in this book to coordinate the trans-
portation process of RDOPG applications, a stage-based Tabu Search metaheuris-
tic (cf. Glover 1989 and Glover and Laguna 1998) is applied. The Tabu Search
metaheuristic is an iteration-based heuristic improvement method which performs a
neighborhood based search in the solution space. As mentioned in Sect. 2.3.5, the
neighborhood of a neighborhood operator is defined as the set of solutions which
can be generated from a current solution by applying this operator. In order to over-
come local optima and to enable the metaheuristic to examine a broader part of the
solution space, neighborhood operators are classified into intensifying and diversi-
fying operators (cf. Glover and Laguna 1998, p. 7 et seq.):
• Intensifying neighborhood operators: Such operators often attempt to improve
the current solution by applying small changes to the tour plan, e.g., only rein-
serting one customer to another location within the same tour. It is advisable to
utilize such operators when the current solution is located in a part of the solution
space where better solutions are expected to be attained by making slight changes
in the current solution. Besides this, Glover and Laguna state that these operators
are useful for exploring the neighborhood of elite solutions i.e., new best solu-
tions, found during the search process. This is carried out in order to find local
optima in the solution space that are close to the current solution. Moreover, these
operators can also be used to combine parts of previously found elite solutions in
order to generate a new best solution similar to adaptive memory techniques, e.g.,
7.1 General Concepts of the Implemented Solution Method 187
as applied in Gendreau et al. (1999a). In doing so, previously visited parts of the
solution space can also be re-examined in more detail.
• Diversifying neighborhood operators: Such operators attempt to improve the
current solution by applying significant modifications to it. In so doing, guiding
the search process to unvisited parts of the solution space is the pursued aim so
that these parts are examined for other promising solutions. The utilization of di-
versifying neighborhood operators is advisable when intensifying neighborhood
operators have not found a new best solution during a specific number of past
iterations of the search process.
As a specific criterion of Tabu Search metaheuristics, information about the
progress of the current search process is stored. Specifically, characteristics of so-
lutions that have already been visited are stored in a list denoted as tabu list. Using
this tabu list aims at avoiding the revisiting of solutions within a specified num-
ber of iterations during the solution process. For this purpose, visited solutions are
marked as tabu-active. The utilization of the tabu list supports the search process in
continuing to evaluate other parts of the solution space after a local optimum has
been reached. In order to identify tabu-active solutions, characteristic attributes for
determining the tabu-active state of solutions have to be defined. More information
about the implemented attributes in the proposed Tabu Search metaheuristic is given
in Sect. 7.3.
An iteration of the search process in a Tabu Search metaheuristic is generally
carried out as follows. Its neighborhood is examined by applying a specific neigh-
borhood operator starting from a current solution. After all solutions of this non-
tabu active neighborhood have been evaluated, one neighbor is selected as the new
solution according to specific criteria. The modifications that are applied to the cur-
rent solution to obtain the new solution are called a neighborhood move or in short
move. Note that in situations during the search process in which all neighbored so-
lutions are worse than the current solution, the selected neighborhood move leads
to a solution with an objective function value worse than the current solution. For
example, this scenario happens when a local optimum is reached. In a Tabu Search
metaheuristic, worse solutions are usually accepted in order to overcome these local
optima. Specifically, the application of more diversifying neighborhood operators
is likely to first result in worse solutions since major parts of the current solution
are changed in order to guide the search process into a different part of the solution
space. However, this is accepted since it is expected that this temporal deterioration
leads to better solutions in subsequent iterations.
Since Tabu Search is an improvement metaheuristic, an initial solution has to
be provided to it. In our proposed solution approach, the generation of the initial
solution, i.e., the initial tour plan, is described in Sect. 7.4.
D r1 r2 r4 r6 v1 r3 r5 v2 E
_ _ _M
v1 K 7
s _
MD
_ _
B |
7 _ F _ F _ F
x x x
@ABC
GFED / @ABC
GFED
r1 o / GFED
@ABC
r2 o / @ABC
GFED
r4 o / GFED
@ABC
r6 o / v o / @ABC
GFED
r o / GFED
@ABC
r o / v o / GFED
@ABC
D o 1 3 5 2 E
In this section, an efficient data structure for modeling tour plans in the solution
method is described (cf., e.g., Nanry and Wesley Barnes 2000). In this data structure,
a tour plan is stored as a doubly linked list (see Fig. 7.1). The nodes of this list
represent the relevant locations (i.e., requests and the depot) in the current situation
of the transportation process and the currently utilized vehicles. The first node in this
list is always the depot D and the last node is an artificial end tour plan element E.
Moreover, each request i is modeled by node ri and each vehicle j is modeled by
node vj . The tour of vehicle k is determined by all request nodes that are located
to the left of vehicle k represented by vehicle node vk in the doubly linked list up
to the next vehicle node or the depot node, respectively. Each vehicle starts its tour
at its current position determined by the vehicle node, services the assigned request
nodes and lastly travels back to the depot node.
Note that unused vehicles waiting at the depot are not generally included in the
tour plan and need to be inserted by a neighborhood operator. In the example given
in Fig. 7.1, the tour of vehicle 1 is therefore described as v1 → r1 → r2 → r4 →
r6 → D and vehicle 2 has the tour v2 → r3 → r5 → D. In Fig. 7.2, the tour of
vehicle 1 is illustrated.
190 7 The Proposed Tabu Search Solution Method
As stated in step 4 in Sect. 7.1.2, the change in the objective function value, i.e., the
move value, has to be evaluated for each neighbored solution within an iteration.
Clearly, this evaluation can be realized by calculating the objective function value
of the complete tentative tour plan. However, since this consumes computational
time and the solution method is executed under a given time limit, it is advisable
to determine the move value in more computational time-efficient ways. In what
follows, we present two aspects which are utilized in the proposed solution method
for efficiently calculating the move value. The first aspect consists of two important
characteristics of the considered objective function value: (a) the objective function
value of a tour plan is equal to the sum of all tours in the tour plan and (b) the
objective function value of each tour is independent of the other tours. Hence, by
storing the objective function values for each tour instead of storing only one value
of the complete tour plan, the move value can be computed by only calculating dif-
ferences in the objective function of tours which are modified by the current neigh-
borhood move. In the second aspect, systematically examining the neighborhood of
the current neighborhood operator enables the re-use of partial results of computed
objective function values calculated in previously examined neighbored solutions.
This reduces the computational effort of calculating changes in the objective func-
tion value (cf., e.g., Badeau et al. 1997). An example of systematically exploring
the neighbored solutions is shown for the neighborhood operator REL which is de-
scribed in Sect. 7.2.2.
The WTI neighborhood operator removes a single request and reinserts it at its best
position within the same tour. Specifically, for each tour the best performing local
relocation that is not tabu-active is implemented if it leads to a better solution. In
order to provide maximum intensification, this operator only allows request relo-
cations that lead to a better solution. Therefore, within each application, for each
tour of the tour plan, WTI removes a single request and reinserts it at its best po-
sition within the same tour if this leads to a solution improvement. This search is
exhaustive, i.e., an evaluation is made for each request in the tour plan within one
move while storing the best request relocation for each tour. After the evaluation,
the neighborhood move consisting of all stored request relocations is applied to the
tour plan unless this leads to a solution that is marked as tabu. In the latter case,
the best found request relocations are applied successively to the tour plan in order
of non-increasing objective function value improvements. After the application of
each single request relocation, it is checked whether the current tour plan is tabu-
active. If not, the current set of performed request relocations is stored as the current
maximum implementable set WTI max of request relocations that lead to a non-tabu
solution. After evaluating all request relocations, the neighborhood move consisting
of the first WTI max stored tour moves is applied in order of non-increasing objective
function value improvements to the tour plan. The pseudo-code of the WTI neigh-
borhood operator is depicted in Algorithm 7.1.
The REL neighborhood operator works identically with the previously described
WTI neighborhood operator except for the fact that REL evaluates all positions
for request relocation that are on tours other than the one the selected request is
currently assigned to. Hence, it also evaluates the benefits of additionally using cur-
rently idle and unused vehicles. Similar to the WTI neighborhood operator, REL
also simultaneously performs multiple request relocations in one iteration, if pos-
sible. Since a neighborhood move of REL modifies two tours for each relocated
request, both modified tours are marked as changed in order to exclude them from
further request relocation operations in the current neighborhood move. Analogous
to the neighborhood operator WTI, all stored request relocations are subsequently
applied in order of non-increasing objective function value improvements. Poten-
tially occurring solutions which are tabu-active are avoided in the same way as de-
scribed in WTI. In order to allow an increased diversification compared to WTI,
in case of non-existing improving request relocations in the current neighborhood,
the best neighborhood move that leads to a non-tabu solution is applied, i.e., the one
that generates the slightest cost increase. The pseudo-code of the REL neighborhood
operator is depicted in Algorithm 7.2.
D r1 r3 r2 r4 v1 r5 ...
Evaluated insertions of r6 :
D r6 r1 r3 r2 r4 v1 r5 ...
D r1 r6 r3 r2 r4 v1 r5 ...
...
D r1 r3 r2 r4 r6 v1 r5 ...
D r1 r3 r2 r4 v1 r6 r5 ...
D r1 r3 r2 r4 v1 r5 r6 ...
...
Fig. 7.3 The first steps of systematically reinserting request r6 into the tour plan using the neigh-
borhood operator REL
short, these further approximation techniques are not implemented in the proposed
approach.
The neighborhood operator MREL simultaneously removes n requests from the tour
plan where n is randomly drawn from interval [MRELreqMin , MRELreqMax ]. After-
wards, the removed requests are successively reinserted at their least cost positions
in the tour plan. Since a sub-procedure of the REL neighborhood operator is applied
for this reinsertion, MREL also evaluates benefits of using additional idle and un-
used vehicles. Note that the sequence in which the removed requests are iteratively
reinserted may have considerable effect on the resulting solution. Therefore, MREL
considers all possible permutations for reinserting the removed requests into the tour
plan. In order to make a time-efficient use of previously considered permutations,
evaluated permutations are iteratively modified from last positions to first positions.
Clearly, due to the exponential number of possible request removals, an exhaus-
tive examination of all existing subsets comprising n requests in an iteration is not
reasonable. Therefore, the neighborhood operator focuses on requests that are cur-
rently assumed to be inefficiently positioned in the tour plan. These requests are
identified by a high contribution value to the objective function value. This con-
tribution is individually determined for each request r by calculating the objective
function value improvement that occurs when only r is removed from the tour plan.
Subsequently, all requests are ordered in a list denoted as R w by non-increasing
objective function contribution values. Since requests with highest contribution
values are located at the beginning of this list, all requests with a later position
than n · MRELreqSelR are erased from R w . Afterwards, n requests that are consid-
ered by MREL in the current evaluation are randomly chosen from R w forming the
set R ∗ .
Within one move, the described selection, removal, and reinsertion of requests
is repeated c times, where c is randomly chosen from interval [MRELexecMin ,
MRELexecMax ]. The best found non-tabu neighborhood move is stored and finally
executed. The MREL neighborhood operator is described in pseudo-code in Algo-
rithm 7.3.
In each iteration of the solution method in which the LNS neighborhood operator is
applied, LNS iteratively evaluates the relocation of a chosen number of n requests
by removing and subsequently reinserting them at their least cost positions in se-
quence of non-increasing objective function contribution values. Since LNS also
uses a sub-procedure of REL for reinserting each individual request, the possibility
7.2 Neighborhood Operators 195
of utilizing additional unused vehicles at the depot is also considered in this neigh-
borhood operator. The selection and reinsertion process is repeated c times where c
is randomly chosen from interval [LNSexecMin , LNSexecMax ].
Compared to the MREL operator, the LNS neighborhood operator provides a
substantially higher variety of the number n of requests that are simultaneously
considered in one move. Note that this has been shown to be efficiently appli-
cable to VRPs (cf. Ropke and Pisinger 2006). In each LNS iteration, n is set to
max(2, m · |RτU+ |), where m is randomly drawn from interval [0, LNSreqRemF ],
LNSreqRemF < 1. These n requests are randomly chosen from list R w that was in-
troduced in MREL. Analogous to MREL, the size of the set R w depends on n, in
this case it holds that |R w | = min(|RτU+ |, n · LNSreqSelR ). Consequently, since n may
be much larger than in MREL, it is computationally intractable to evaluate all exist-
ing n! permutations for reinsertion. Therefore, LNS reinserts the selected requests in
one particular sequence as mentioned above, that is, in sequence of non-increasing
objective function contribution values. The pseudo-code of the LNS neighborhood
operator is shown in Algorithm 7.4.
In the neighborhood operator XBT, two requests which are located on different tours
are exchanged so that their positions in both tours are preserved. Due to the fixed
reinsertion positions, diversification is attained. Similar to the WRT neighborhood
operator, this neighborhood operator works exhaustively, i.e., it considers all exist-
ing pairs of requests. After evaluating the possible combinations of two requests, the
best found non-tabu move is implemented. The pseudo-code of this neighborhood
operator is depicted in Algorithm 7.5.
196 7 The Proposed Tabu Search Solution Method
can be reached by vehicles at or before rie . Since dummy customer requests have no
cost contribution to the objective function value before the time point rie , signifi-
cantly different tour plans might not be distinguishable by their objective function
value. Consequently, these different tour plans could be falsely identified as equal
and therefore erroneously considered tabu-active. Furthermore, in our real-time con-
trol approach, another reason speaks against using the objective function value as
a tabu-active attribute. Specifically, since the considered static system state is be-
ing modified during the transportation process, the objective function values of all
solutions also changes over different static problem instances. Therefore, using the
objective function value as a tabu-active attribute does not allow for identification
tour plans over different considered static problem instances.
In order to overcome these limitations, a fingerprint of the tour plan for real-
izing the tabu-active attribute is used. This fingerprint is based on the sequence
of requests in the tour plan and their assignment to vehicles. This method allows
the Tabu Search solution method to identify the same tour plans even between
consecutive static problems. The fingerprint is implemented by a combination of
the two quickly computable checksums CRC-32 (cf. Moon 2005, p. 147 et seq.)
and Adler-32 (cf. Deutsch and Gailly 1996). For a given tour plan, these meth-
ods calculate checksum values by using the tours of the tour plan as input data,
i.e., by considering the sequence of requests and their assignment to the vehicles.
In these checksum calculations, each request is represented by a unique request
ID and a value of the assigned vehicle which depends on its status. Specifically,
if the vehicle has already been utilized, i.e., has left the depot, a unique vehicle
ID is used. Otherwise, the same value for all unused vehicles waiting at the depot
is used. Using this fingerprint, two tour plans P1 , P2 are identified as identical if
both described checksums are equal in the tour plans, i.e., cscrc32 (P1 ) = cscrc32 (P2 )
and csadler32 (P1 ) = csadler32 (P2 ). Note that in Stone (2001, p. 128 et seq.) and Stone
et al. (2002), the authors state that the Adler-32 checksum has some drawbacks when
it is applied to short input data. Specifically, since the Adler-32 checksum is basi-
cally calculated by the summation of individual values, in case of short input data,
only small checksum values are usually generated. Hence, in problem instances with
only a few requests, Adler-32 may have an increased tendency to produce equal
checksums for different tour plans of short length. However, since CRC-32 does not
possess this drawback and the combination of both checksums is always used to
identify the tabu-active state of a solution, no disadvantages arise. The Adler-32 al-
gorithm is used due to its fast computation time which additionally helps to reduce
the false detection rate of different solutions in larger problem instances.
Besides the implementation of the tabu-active attribute, the tabu list requires the
definition of the tabu tenure that determines the number of iterations for which
tabu-active attributes are valid. Since preliminary empirical studies in the consid-
ered RDOPG applications reveal an almost unique identification of solutions by
the applied fingerprint, a tabu-active solution is never withdrawn. This allows for
identification of solutions over static problem instances. Clearly, since each change
regarding the set of pending requests at time τ + defined by RτU+ makes former and
198 7 The Proposed Tabu Search Solution Method
r3 r4 r5
D r2 r1 v1 E
D r2 r1 r3 v1 r5 r4 v2 E
Fig. 7.5 Real requests inserted by the construction heuristic. If dummy customers are used, these
are inserted afterwards
new solutions incomparable, the tabu list is reset whenever the pending request sit-
uation changes. Moreover, as mentioned in Sect. 5.2.2, the solution method returns
to the first stage and is directly applied to the solution that is currently in execution
in its pre-simulated state at τ + .
Table 7.1 Stage-based selection scheme of the proposed Tabu Search solution method
Stage Operator Switch after number of iterations without new best solution
7.7 Summary
This chapter introduced the solution method which is used to efficiently solve the
individual static problem instances generated by the deterministic and pro-active
real-time control approach during the execution of the transportation process. In or-
der to cope with the tight computational time restrictions imposed by the real-time
nature of the considered RDOPG applications, an elaborated Tabu Search meta-
heuristic solution method was proposed. It utilizes different neighborhood operators
which are selected by a deterministic stage-based selection scheme. After describ-
ing the Tabu Search metaheuristic in general, the utilized neighborhood operators
were presented in detail. Moreover, the applied tabu-active attribute in the tabu list
was explained. In the proposed approach, a fingerprint consisting of two quickly
computable checksums was used as the tabu-active attribute in order to allow an
almost unique identification of individual solutions. This fingerprint also allows the
7.7 Summary 201
bidden. Test results illustrating the positive effects of allowing vehicle en-route
diversion on the solution quality are provided.
4. The efficiency of measuring structural distortion using the Goodness-of-Fit test
used in our forecasting methods is evaluated. This evaluation is conducted on
request data sets that have different levels of structural distortion. Moreover, a
suitable value for the minimum demanded Poisson quality parameter for gener-
ating stochastic knowledge is derived.
5. Using the derived Poisson quality parameter value, results of generating stochas-
tic knowledge for S REAL and S GEN , which is used in our main computational
experiments, are presented.
6. Based on the results of the previous five evaluations, a comprehensive compu-
tational study regarding the performance evaluation of the pro-active real-time
control approach is provided in the main computational experiments of this book
in order to answer the first and second research question. Specifically, a detailed
analysis of the conditions under which the generated stochastic knowledge can
be reasonably utilized in the pro-active real-time control approach is carried out.
This analysis is conducted by assessing the performance of the proposed pro-
active real-time control approach in comparison to its deterministic counterpart,
i.e., the deterministic real-time control approach which does not make any use of
stochastic knowledge. In addition to an existing real-world request data set, test
studies on designed request data sets are conducted.
In order to analyze under which conditions the use of the proposed pro-active
real-time control approach is recommendable, we identify crucial characteristics
of the evaluated test instances. From the results of this study we conclude that
the structural quality of the existing request data set is one of these crucial char-
acteristics. Specifically, we propose that the structural quality of a request data
set depends on its structural distortion and structural diversity:
• Structural distortion: In the proposed forecasting approach it is assumed that
request arrivals can be modeled by non-homogeneous time-space Poisson pro-
cesses whose rate parameters remain constant from day to day (see Sect. 6.2).
If this assumption is not fulfilled in the existing request data set, future requests
are likely to occur with significant differences from what was forecasted. In
this case, utilizing the stochastic knowledge generated by the proposed fore-
casting method is likely to lead to a worse solution quality. Hence, we state that
it is important that the available request data has a low structural distortion.
In our proposed forecasting approach the Chi-Square Goodness-of-Fit test is
applied in order to measure the Poisson quality of a given request data set (see
Sect. 6.2.1). We evaluate the efficiency of this test for identifying the structural
distortion on request data sets with different levels of structural distortion in
Sect. 8.6.
• Structural diversity: In addition to requiring a low structural distortion, we
classify the structural quality of request data sets according to the changes
which occur in the request arrival rates in individual subregions during the con-
sidered planning horizon. We define that request data sets with nearly constant
request arrival rates comprise a low structural diversity while request data sets
8.1 The Discrete Event-Based Simulator 205
with significantly changing request arrival rates in the subregions have a high
structural diversity. In order to analyze the effects of structural diversity on
the attainable improvements, we generate test instances with designed levels
of structural diversity (see Sect. 8.2.4.2) and evaluate the attainable improve-
ments depending on the existing level of structural diversity. Moreover, we
propose two methods for determining the structural diversity of given request
data sets in Sects. 8.8.1 and 8.9.
According to the above criteria, a request data set is considered to have a high
structural quality if it has a low structural distortion and a high structural diver-
sity. Therefore, the structural quality of a request data set determines the value
of the stochastic knowledge which can be generated out of this request data set.
Consequently, a high structural quality indicates that high improvements of the
solution quality can be achieved if the proposed pro-active real-time control ap-
proach is used compared with the results attained by its deterministic counterpart.
7. In the previous computational experiments, it was shown that high levels of
structural diversity significantly increase the improvements attainable by the pro-
active real-time control approach. Based on these insights, we propose a measure
for determining the structural diversity of arbitrary request data sets. This mea-
sure is denoted as the degree of structural diversity and its significance is statis-
tically proven.
8. In the third evaluation, the advantages of allowing vehicle en-route diversion in
the considered RDOPG applications are shown. However, allowing vehicle en-
route diversion may increase driver inconvenience since drivers are obliged to
quickly react to occurring changes in their tour while they are traveling to their
next assigned request. In order to deal with this issue, we additionally consider
driver inconvenience aspects in the real-time control approaches. For this pur-
pose, a method for limiting the number of performed vehicle en-route diversion
activities is developed. The effects of this method on the solution quality and
resulting driver inconvenience is assessed. Recommended parameter settings for
achieving a suitable trade-off between the contradicting aims of driver inconve-
nience and customer inconvenience as well as parameter settings for prioritizing
each of the aims are provided.
After these computational experiments, we conclude our evaluations by giving a
summary and answers to the three central research questions which were posed in
Sect. 1.3.1.
In order to analyze the real-time control approaches under real-time conditions, all
transportation processes of the considered RDOPG applications are carried out by
an implemented discrete event-based simulator. In discrete event-based simulators,
the simulation time is always set from the current time to the time point when the
206 8 Computational Results
Process 2
Process 1
Time point 0: Event 1 Event 2 Event 3 Event 4 Event 5 Event 6 End of the time
Beginning of the execution of the
execution of the Arrival of Arrival of Start of Start of End of End of transportation
transportation request 1 request 2 service of service of service of service of process:
process request 1 request 2 request 1 request 2 All requests have
been serviced,
Request 1 is Request 2 is all vehicles are
completed, completed, back at the depot
leaves the leaves the
system system
Fig. 8.1 Interrelation of event, process, and operation using the example of servicing two re-
quests (cf. Biethahn et al. 1999, p. 52)
next event in the system takes place as mentioned in Sect. 4.7.3. In addition to con-
ducting the computational experiments, the implemented simulator is also used for
pre-simulating the system state at the beginning of each anticipation horizon. This
pre-simulation concept was introduced in Sect. 5.2.1 in order to generate the antic-
ipated system state at the end of the anticipation horizon so that the concurrency of
the execution and adaptation of the transportation process is considered. By utilizing
this pre-simulated system state, the static problem instance for the current anticipa-
tion horizon is generated (see Sect. 5.2.2). In the individual anticipation horizons
conducted by the real-time control concept presented in Sect. 5.2.1, it is assumed
that the real vehicle activities are in line with the activities that have been antici-
pated.
As mentioned in Sect. 4.7.3, a system consists of entities that act or interact to-
gether towards the accomplishment of some logical end (cf. Schmidt and Taylor
1970). Hence, in order to model a complex dynamic system such as RDOPG ap-
plications, it is necessary to identify all entities of the system. In the considered
system, the entities consist of requests and vehicles. Dynamically arriving requests
trigger so-called exogenous events that unexpectedly change the relevant informa-
tion of the transportation process from outside the system since new requests arrive
with uncertainty. In contrast, vehicle activities trigger endogenous events that mod-
ify the relevant information in ways that are generated by the system itself and can
be expected with high certainty, such as request servicing activities performed by
vehicles.
As depicted in Fig. 8.1, the executed transportation process can be subdivided
into several individual processes. A process is defined by mutually dependent events
and intermediate operations. A new process starts when a request arrives in the sys-
tem. It consists of exactly two operations: Waiting time and activity. The waiting
8.1 The Discrete Event-Based Simulator 207
time operation directly starts upon the arrival of a new request. In the RDOPG ap-
plications, the length of the waiting time determines the response time and hence
the resulting customer inconvenience. The activity operation starts when a vehicle
reaches a customer request location. This operation is defined as an activity since the
vehicle that services the request cannot perform other tasks during this activity. The
length of this activity is defined by the service time of the request. In Fig. 8.1, the
interrelation between the participating entities in the system is illustrated. In what
follows, we describe the simulation of requests as well as the simulation of vehicles.
In each anticipation horizon, the vehicle activities are simulated by executing the
current relevant tour plan. Specifically, at time point τ , after the relevant tour plan Pτr
has been determined, each vehicle executes its tour according to Pτr for t a time units.
Depending on the current vehicle’s status (see also Sect. 5.3.2.2), this execution
comprises the following activities:
208 8 Computational Results
• Traveling: The vehicle travels in the road network to the next assigned request of
its tour.
• Servicing: The vehicle services a request at the corresponding request location.
• Waiting at a dummy customer request: The vehicle waits at a dummy customer
request location.
• Waiting at the last request location: The vehicle waits at the location of its last
serviced request if the vehicle is currently idle since it has no further requests
assigned.
• Waiting at the depot: The vehicle waits at the depot location if it is unused.
Within the time period [τ, τ + ), it is possible that a vehicle performs more than one
of these activities if the current activity requires less time than is available in the
current anticipation horizon.
The experiments are conducted with fleet sizes of 8, 10, and 12 vehicles. These
fleet sizes have been empirically chosen from preliminary tests. They represent in-
teresting constellations for the number of requests in the considered request sets.
Specifically, while a fleet size of 8 vehicles represents a scenario with a very re-
stricted set of available resources, the 12 vehicle setting provides significantly more
flexibility for vehicle dispatching and pro-active strategies.
All proposed real-time control approaches and the segment-based forecasting ap-
proach were implemented using Borland Delphi while specific request generation
and evaluation tools were developed using Microsoft Excel. The implemented appli-
cations comprise in total about 50,000 lines of code. The computational experiments
were run on Intel Pentium D 2.8 GHz CPU (2.5 GB RAM) computers.
1 Available at http://www.cs.wm.edu/~va/software/park/.
210 8 Computational Results
In order to obtain useful parameter values for generating and integrating dummy
customer requests, extensive preliminary tests have been conducted. The obtained
results indicate that the following parameter values for dummy customer generation
and integration are reasonable:
• Spatial and temporal precision: According to results of preliminary compu-
tational experiments, the extension of each segment used in the segment-based
clustering approach is set to DCse × DCte = (2.5 kilometers × 2.5 kilometers) ×
1 minute. Therefore, the considered service area of size 22.5 kilometers ×
20 kilometers is divided into 9 × 8 subareas. Since the considered transporta-
tion process is controlled for four hours, we obtain the set S with altogether
|S| = 9 · 8 · 60 · 4 = 17,280 segments.
• Range of past request information: The number of past working days utilized
in the generation of the stochastic knowledge is set to nf = 60.
• Maximum cluster extension: The maximum spatial cluster extension DCmse is
set to 2 by 2 segments (i.e., 5 kilometers × 5 kilometers) while the maximum
allowed temporal cluster height (DCmte ) is set to 15 segments (i.e., 15 minutes).
• Dummy customer location: For determining a reasonable location for the
dummy customer, the maximum predefined travel time radius DCradiusTT is set
to 300 seconds whereas the maximum allowed average travel time within a clus-
ter DCmaxAvgTT is set to 650 seconds.
• Dummy customer prediction quality: The following five values are evaluated
for the minimum dummy customer quality DCminλ : DCminλ ∈ {1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
2.0}. Consequently, in these cases, the expected occurrence probability of at least
one request in an accepted cluster amounts to at least 63.21 %, 69.88 %, 77.69 %,
83.47 %, or 86.47 %, respectively.
• Dummy customer removal: Two different parameter values are evaluated
for DCλrem , in particular DCλrem ∈ {0.50, 0.25}. Hence, a dummy customer is
removed when the arrival probability of at least one more request in the assigned
cluster becomes lower than 39.45 % or 22.12 %, respectively.
The computational experiments are conducted on the following two request data
classes: Real-world request data class S REAL and generated request data class S GEN .
In addition to the equal request service time defined in Sect. 3.1 by R st = 60 sec-
onds, two further parameters are used for real requests as well as for dummy cus-
tomer requests in both request data classes. Specifically, in all experiments, the max-
imum allowed request response time R mrt is set to 3,600 seconds while the lateness
penalty costs R pen , that occur when R mrt is exceeded, are set to 100. As mentioned
in Sect. 5.3.2.4, since a request has a cost contribution of only 1.0 to the objective
8.2 Test Environment, Parameter Values, and Request Data Classes 211
function value at a response time equal to R mrt , the significantly higher lateness
penalty costs R pen are considered prohibitive costs. Clearly, due to the real-time na-
ture of the considered problem and depending on the available fleet size, the arrival
of additional dynamic requests may result in a scenario where some requests can
only be serviced after the maximum allowed request response time R mrt .
In what follows, we describe both evaluated request data classes in detail. First,
the real-world request data class S REAL is described followed by the generated re-
quest data class S GEN . Note that all request data sets of both request data classes
consist of 30 days. Consequently, in the computational experiments, each evalua-
tion of a setting results in 30 test instances.
The request data class S REAL comprises one request data set of 30 randomly cho-
sen days out of over 400 weekdays and results from a case study of the subsequent
delivery process carried out by a German newspaper publishing company. In this re-
quest data set, 150 requests per day have to be processed on average. The subsequent
delivery of newspapers starts at 7 am. Since the majority of subsequent delivery re-
quests occur before 11 am, the computational experiments consider all requests that
arrive up to this point in time. Therefore, each simulated day consists of four hours
during which new requests may occur. Clearly, for generating stochastic knowledge,
for each of the 30 randomly chosen days of S REAL , the nf = 60 past working days
of the available real-world data are utilized.
Regarding request arrivals, an analysis of the provided data has shown that only
a few requests arrive before 7 am so that more than 90 % of all requests arrive after
7 am (see Fig. 8.2). Therefore, according to Larsen et al. (2002) and as mentioned
in Sect. 2.6.5, a high degree of dynamism can be identified for this request data set.
Note that, due to the real-world nature of this request data set, underlying request
distributions as well as other possibly existing non-deterministic structures are un-
known in S REAL . Hence, neither the structural distortion nor the structural diversity
of S REAL is known. Both criteria are evaluated by our proposed methods in this
chapter.
In contrast to S REAL , request arrivals in the request data class S GEN are designed
according to the following characteristics. This request data class comprises re-
quests that have been generated by time-space Poisson processes with time- and
space-dependent rate parameters which remain constant from day to day. The gen-
eration is carried out in a manner similar to the procedure described in Ichoua
et al. (2006). Specifically, the considered service area is subdivided into a set
of P quadratic disjunct regions of equal size a1 , . . . , aP while the considered time
212 8 Computational Results
Request arrivals
before 7:00- 7:30- 8:00- 8:30- 9:00- 9:30- 10:00- 10:30- 11:00- 11:30- 12:00- 12:30- 1:00- 1:30- 2:00- 2:30- after
begin 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 2:30 3:00 3:00
Time
Fig. 8.2 Average request arrival distribution of the request data class S REAL
period for new request arrivals from 6:45 am to 11 am is divided into Q differ-
ent disjunct time slices t1 , . . . , tQ which do not overlap each other. The parame-
ter λ(ai , tj ) determines the request arrival rate of a time-space Poisson process in
region ai during time slice tj . Moreover, tjs defines the start time and tje defines the
end time of time slice tj , j ∈ {1, . . . , Q}. Given the current time slice tj , the arrival
time of the next request is determined using a Poisson process with rate parame-
ter λ(tj ) = P i=1 λ(ai , tj ). The region in which this new request will occur is deter-
λ(a ,t )
mined according to the region probability values p(ai , tj ) = λ(ti j )j . Finally, within
the chosen region ai , the spatial position of the new request is uniformly drawn.
Hence, as suggested by Larsen (2000, p. 45), we utilize time-dependent Poisson
processes for generating request arrivals in the request data class S GEN . As in the
solution method, parameter values are generated by using an individual stream of
random numbers, which are provided by the extended version of the random num-
ber generator of Park and Miller (1988) and Park et al. (1993), for each type of
parameter.
Based on the rate parameters λ(ai , tj ) used in the applied setting, different levels
of spatial and temporal structural diversity, i.e., levels of variance in request arrivals,
occur. We introduce two dimensions of structural diversity: While RegionDiversity
(RD) measures the regional variance of request arrival rates in the service area within
one time slice, TimeDiversity (TD) gives the variance of request arrival rates in each
considered region ai of the service area during the considered planning horizon.
Moreover, TD also defines variations in λ(tj ) from one time slice to the other. In
order to evaluate the impact of different levels of structural diversity on the struc-
tural quality of request data sets, different request data sets comprising various value
settings of both structural diversity dimensions are designed in S GEN . All settings,
i.e., request data sets, are iteratively generated by starting from an initial setting
with a defined maximum level of structural diversity denoted as RD = TD = 1.00.
The structural diversity of this initial setting results from individually defined rate
parameters λ(ai , tj ). In subsequently generated request data sets with lower levels
of structural diversity, the rate parameter values are iteratively reduced by apply-
ing a linear averaging that balances the rate parameters λ(ai , tj ) accordingly. In
8.2 Test Environment, Parameter Values, and Request Data Classes 213
0.40
Request arrival probability per region
0.35 a4
0.30 a3
0.25
0.20 a2
0.15
0.10
a6
0.05 a5
a1
0.00
1.00 0.75 0.50 0.25 0.00
RegionDiversity (RD )
Fig. 8.3, an example of this linear averaging process for resulting request arrival
probabilities is illustrated using P = 6 regions a1 , . . . , a6 and one time slice, i.e.,
Q = 1. As can be seen, setting RD = 1.00 results in a request data set in which
the defined probabilities are fully present in each region while RD = 0.00 results in
the same request arrival probability in each region. With regard to S GEN , by using
a step size of 0.25 and completing with a final setting RD = TD = 0.00, we ob-
tain 25 request data sets altogether. Apart from negligible distortion effects caused
by the real-world character of the road network, setting RD = TD = 0.00 produces
a complete uniform distribution of request arrivals during the considered planning
horizon. Moreover, the setting RD = 1.00, TD = 0.00 results in a request data set
with significantly different request arrival rates in the regions. However, request
arrival rates in the regions and the total request arrival rate per time slice remain
constant during the planning horizon. In contrast, the setting RD = 0.00, TD = 1.00
generates a request data set in which request arrivals have the same probability in
all regions but the total request arrival rate in a time slice changes between time
slices according to the initially defined values for RD = TD = 1.00. Algorithm 8.1
illustrates the generation of a request data set of the request data class S GEN with
defined levels of structural diversity RD and TD. In lines 1–13 the mentioned linear
averaging of the request arrival rates and request arrival probabilities is performed.
Specifically, in line 5, for each time slice tj the request arrival rate λ (tj ) is cal-
culated according to the chosen TD setting. In line 8, the average request arrival
probability over all time slices for region ai denoted as p̄ (ai ) is calculated depend-
ing on the initially defined request arrival rates and the selected RD setting. Based
on this value, the resulting request arrival probability of region ai in time slice tj is
calculated in line 10 and 11. According to these calculated values, in lines 14–26,
the request data set is generated as described above.
In all 25 generated request data sets of S GEN , the number of regions is set
to P = 18 and the number of time slices to Q = 5. The request arrival probabil-
ity parameters utilized for generating the setting RD = TD = 1.00 are illustrated in
Fig. 8.4. Note that this figure shows a simplified illustration of the road network,
214 8 Computational Results
Algorithm 8.1 Generation of a request data set of S GEN with RD ∈ [0, 1] and
TD ∈ [0, 1]
1: {Generate request arrival rate parameters based on given structural diversity
levels}
Q
2: nall ← j =1 λ(tj )
3: for j ← 1 to Q do
tje −tjs
4: n ← nall · tQe −t s
1
5: λ (tj ) ← n + (λ(tj ) − n) · TD
6: end for
7: for i ← 1 to P do
1 Q
8: p̄ (ai ) ← Q · j =1 ( P1 + (p(ai , tj ) − P1 ) · RD)
9: for j ← 1 to Q do
10: x ← P1 + (p(ai , tj ) − P1 ) · RD
11: p (ai , tj ) ← p̄ (ai ) + (x − p̄ (ai )) · TD
12: end for
13: end for
14: {Generate request data set}
15: for d ← 1 to number of days to be generated do
16: for j ← 1 to Q do
17: t ← tjs
18: while t < tje do
19: t ← Next request arrival time defined by a Poisson process with rate
parameter λ (tj )
20: if t < tje then
21: Determine region k ∈ {1, . . . , P} in which the request will occur ac-
cording to p (ai , tj ) values, i ∈ {1, . . . , P}
22: Generate new request i at time t with a uniformly distributed location
in region k. Determine node ñ ∈ Ñ closest to this location in the road
p
network R̃ and set ri = ñ. Furthermore, set request arrival time ria = t
23: end if
24: end while
25: end for
26: end for
i.e., only highways and major roads are included in this illustration. Moreover, in
order to generate all request data sets of S GEN with a degree of dynamism that is
comparable to the one observed in S REAL , only a few requests arrive before the
considered start of the transportation process at 7 am. Specifically, over 90 % of
all requests occur after the start of the execution of the transportation process in
all generated settings. In contrast to S REAL , in request data sets of S GEN with high
levels of structural diversity, request arrival rates increase more rapidly during the
planning horizon. Moreover, the peak of request arrivals is moved to the center of
the considered planning horizon and the number of request arrivals is maintained
8.2 Test Environment, Parameter Values, and Request Data Classes 215
Fig. 8.4 Simplified illustration of the road network with request arrival probabilities p(ai , tj ) for
the structural diversity setting S GEN RD = TD = 1.00
on a high level after the peak. This is performed in order to also generate a high
system utilization after the request arrival peak. Despite these slight modifications,
S GEN possesses characteristics which are similar to S REAL , i.e., a low request arrival
rate at the beginning of the planning horizon and a high increase of request arrival
rates before the peak. Moreover, the subsequent decrease is significantly lower than
its increase before the peak of request arrival rates. The time slices and number of
expected request arrivals are illustrated in Table 8.1. Figure 8.5 visualizes the cor-
responding total request arrival rates of three TD settings of S GEN . Note that since
regional differences of request arrivals are not illustrated in this diagram, the de-
picted total request arrival rates are independent of RD.
According to the described parameters, Fig. 8.6 visualizes three request data sets
of S GEN . As can be seen in this figure, higher levels of structural diversity result in
the desired significant differences of temporal and spatial request arrivals. All 25 re-
quest data sets of S GEN are illustrated in the Appendix in Fig. B.1. Analogous to
S REAL , each of the 25 request data sets of S GEN consists of 30 days. Since request
arrivals in the request data sets of S GEN are generated by time-space Poisson pro-
cesses that are constant from day to day, the proposed forecasting methods are able
to generate stochastic knowledge that can reliably forecast future request arrivals.
Therefore, we conclude that the request data sets of the request data class S GEN have
a low structural distortion.
216 8 Computational Results
Table 8.1 Parameter values for the time slices utilized in generating S GEN
Time slice tj Start time tjs End time tje Request arrival rate λ(tj )
0 06:45 08:00 15
1 08:00 09:00 40
2 09:00 09:30 30
3 09:30 10:30 35
4 10:30 11:00 10
35
TD = 1.00
30
TD = 0.50
25 TD = 0.00
Request arrivals
20
15
10
0
before begin 7:00-7:30 7:30-8:00 8:00-8:30 8:30-9:00 9:00-9:30 9:30-10:00 10:00-10:30 10:30-11:00
Time
Fig. 8.6 Three request data sets of S GEN with different levels of structural diversity
All computational experiments of both request data classes are separately conducted
with both customer inconvenience functions, i.e., linear2X as well as quadratic. As
mentioned in Sect. 8.2.1, each available day in both tested request data sets is con-
ducted using 8, 10, and 12 vehicles in order to analyze the impact of the number
8.2 Test Environment, Parameter Values, and Request Data Classes 217
For example, in order to determine the performance of the pro-active real-time con-
trol approach by comparing its results to the ones obtained by the deterministic
2 We assume that the application of the real-time control approach A1 has already led to an im-
provement in comparison to carrying out the coordination of the transportation process without
using any real-time control approaches.
218 8 Computational Results
unserviced pending requests in the 10 vehicle case compared to the 8 vehicle sce-
nario. As mentioned in Sect. 4.6, this column generation approach is well suited
for solving routing problem instances in which an optimal solution consists of tours
of short length. Since this is likely to be the case in the problem instances which
are evaluated, as can be seen from the low request to vehicle ratio described above,
this exact approach is an adequate method for assessing the performance of the pro-
posed Tabu Search metaheuristic. In the conducted experiments, the computational
time available for the Tabu Search procedure is restricted to 10 seconds while a time
limit of one hour is given for computing the lower bound. Clearly, if the exact so-
lution approach is able to compute an optimal solution within the given time limit,
the value of the lower bound is equal to the objective function value of the found
optimal solution.
The evaluation using 10 vehicles indicates that the Tabu Search metaheuristic
attains an almost optimal solution for all static problem instances. Specifically, the
average solution quality of the Tabu Search procedure is only 0.017 % above the
lower bound values which were computed by using the approach of Westphal and
Krumke (2008). By restricting the fleet of vehicles to only 8 vehicles, which results
in more complex static problem instances, this gap increases to 1.26 %. Note that
this increase is solely caused by a few specific static problem instances in which
distorting effects for single requests, whose maximum allowed response time is vi-
olated, occur.
The provided results indicate that the proposed real-time control approach attains
a good solution adaptation performance that is necessary for a real-time application.
Consequently, the application of the implemented Tabu Search metaheuristic for
solving static problem instances allows a sufficiently fast and efficient tour plan
adaptation. Note that, as mentioned in Sect. 2.5.3.2.2, optimally solving individ-
ual static problem instances does not guarantee an optimal result for the overall
problem considered during the planing horizon. Therefore, by integrating stochas-
tic knowledge into the static problem instances, the proposed Tabu Search meta-
heuristic supports the generation of solutions that provide an increased flexibility
for efficiently integrating expected future requests. If high-quality stochastic knowl-
edge is available, optimally solving individual static problem instances during the
transportation process is likely to also result in a high quality solution of the overall
problem considered. Note that since the best solution can be found in 10 seconds in
most of the cases, the utilization of an anticipation horizon with the aforementioned
length of 20 seconds ensures that a time period of 10 seconds is available to the
solution method, even if pre-simulation activities such as road network calculations
consume a time period tacalc of several seconds. Since requests arrive minute-wise
in our request data sets, no drawback in the attained solution quality occurs in the
computational results. However, since the average request response time is between
800 and 1,400 seconds in the evaluated scenarios, an anticipation horizon with a
length of 20 seconds represents a small time period by which newly arriving re-
quests would be additionally buffered if second-wise request arrival times were con-
sidered. Hence, the length of the anticipation horizon is not evaluated any further in
this book. Nevertheless, note that the choice of this parameter generally depends on
220 8 Computational Results
ROLLING20
TIMELIMIT10
ZEROTIME
Fig. 8.7 Adaptation handling of the evaluated deterministic real-time control approaches
the considered application. For example, in applications with more pending requests
and hence larger static problem instances, more computational time is required in
order to attain solutions comprising a high solution quality. In such cases, a trade-off
which requires an in-depth evaluation of different lengths of the anticipation hori-
zon may arise. Research work which evaluates different settings for determining the
length of the anticipation horizon can be found in, e.g., Ichoua et al. (2000), Bock
(2004), and Bock (2010).
Table 8.2 Performance of the evaluated deterministic real-time control approaches on S REAL
Vehicles Percentage improvements attained by
TIMELIMIT10 vs. ZEROTIME ROLLING20 vs. TIMELIMIT10
Note: Listed is the average improvement, pen denotes the total number of late requests
Note: Listed is the average improvement, pen denotes the total number of late requests
both tested objective functions. Specifically, most improvements are achieved in the
8 vehicle scenarios where resources are strongly limited. This is due to the fact
that in this reduced fleet size setting, a very efficient usage of the limited resources
which is attained by TIMELIMIT10 and ROLLING20 is of high relevance. This
can also be observed in Figs. 8.8 and 8.9 in which the results on S REAL are pre-
sented in detail. Here it can be clearly observed that in problem instances with more
requests resulting in more complex transportation situations, an efficient usage of
vehicle resources yields high improvements. As mentioned above, these attainable
improvements are highest when the available fleet size is restricted. Therefore, in ac-
cordance with the results achieved in former studies (cf., e.g., Gendreau et al. 1999a
and Bock 2010), it can be concluded that the application of elaborated real-time
control approaches is advantageous if an efficient execution of complex transporta-
222 8 Computational Results
60%
50%
8 vehicles
Improvement
40% 10 vehicles
12 vehicles
30%
Linear (8 vehicles)
20% Linear (10 vehicles)
Linear (12 vehicles)
10%
0%
120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190
Number of requests
Fig. 8.8 Percentage improvements of TIMELIMIT10 vs. ZEROTIME, linear2X customer incon-
venience on S REAL
80%
70%
60% 8 vehicles
Improvement
50% 10 vehicles
40% 12 vehicles
30% Linear (8 vehicles)
20% Linear (10 vehicles)
10% Linear (12 vehicles)
0%
-10%
120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190
Number of requests
Fig. 8.9 Percentage improvements of TIMELIMIT10 vs. ZEROTIME, quadratic customer incon-
venience on S REAL
tion processes is pursued. The corresponding results for S GENall are illustrated in
Figs. 8.10 and 8.11.
Furthermore, by directly comparing the results of the real-time control ap-
proaches TIMELIMIT10 and ROLLING20 (Tables 8.2 and 8.3), it can be observed
that ROLLING20 does not produce any significant improvements in the considered
RDOPG applications. Thus, it can be concluded that ROLLING20 does not use the
increased computational times efficiently. This result can be explained by analyzing
the Tabu Search evaluation in Sect. 8.3 once again. Specifically, the Tabu Search so-
lution approach is utilized in this evaluation in the same way as in TIMELIMIT10.
Since solutions in this evaluation that are very close to an optimal solution were
attained, no further significant improvements can be achieved by ROLLING20 in
this scenario. In what follows, all experiments are carried out using TIMELIMIT10
since this significantly reduces the time required to perform all test instances (see
8.4 Performance Evaluation of Deterministic Real-Time Control Approaches 223
60%
50%
8 vehicles
40% 10 vehicles
Improvement
12 vehicles
30%
Linear (8 vehicles)
0%
100 110 120 130 140 150 160
Number of requests
Fig. 8.10 Percentage improvements of TIMELIMIT10 vs. ZEROTIME, linear2X customer incon-
venience on S GENall
80%
70%
60% 8 vehicles
Improvement
50% 10 vehicles
40% 12 vehicles
30% Linear (8 vehicles)
20% Linear (10 vehicles)
10% Linear (12 vehicles)
0%
-10%
100 110 120 130 140 150 160
Number of requests
Fig. 8.11 Percentage improvements of TIMELIMIT10 vs. ZEROTIME, quadratic customer in-
convenience on S GENall
Sect. 8.2.5). Nevertheless, note that other scenarios exist in which ROLLING20 can
achieve further improvements compared to TIMELIMIT10 but these are not con-
sidered in this book. Specifically, if scenarios with a significantly higher number
of vehicles and requests are present, it is unlikely that TIMELIMIT10 will be able
to find optimal solutions within the given time limit. Therefore, in such scenar-
ios, the continuous application of the real-time control approach as proposed in
ROLLING20 is likely to result in further significant improvements. Note that in
the scenarios considered in Sects. 8.8 and 8.9, due to its achieved solution qual-
ity TIMELIMIT10 represents a challenging reference setting for attaining further
improvements by additionally utilizing stochastic knowledge in the pro-active real-
time control approach.
224 8 Computational Results
Note: Listed is the average improvement of the objective function value, total number of late re-
quests (pen), average improvement of travel time and travel distance, and the average number of
first request reassignments per test instance and per vehicle in brackets observed in TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10NODIV
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
serviced requests
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10NODIV
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10
Fig. 8.12 Impacts of allowing vehicle en-route diversion on request response times using S REAL
and 8 vehicles grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10NODIV
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
serviced requests
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10NODIV
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10
Fig. 8.13 Impacts of allowing vehicle en-route diversion on request response times using S REAL
and 10 vehicles grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10NODIV
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
serviced requests
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10NODIV
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10
Fig. 8.14 Impacts of allowing vehicle en-route diversion on request response times using S REAL
and 12 vehicles grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
their tour that affect the next assigned request. The last column of Table 8.4 shows
the number of first request reassignments, i.e., vehicle en-route diversion activities,
that have occurred on average per test instance in TIMELIMIT10. Clearly, these
values are 0 for TIMELIMIT10NODIV. Note that a first request reassignment is
recorded only when the first request of a vehicle is changed during a travel activity.
Specifically, a change of the first request is not accounted for if a vehicle is cur-
rently servicing a request or waiting idly for new requests. Moreover, note that if
the first request of a vehicle is reassigned to another vehicle as first request, this
226 8 Computational Results
is considered as two reassignment activities since the first request of both vehicles
is changed. According to the values depicted in Table 8.4 it can be concluded that
vehicle en-route diversion activities occur quite frequently in these computational
experiments. When considering the drivers, this large number of en-route diversion
activities may lead to a high driver inconvenience which is a rarely addressed issue
in dynamic routing applications. Hence, in Sect. 8.10, we continue to discuss this
issue and introduce a method for reducing the number of reassignment activities and
thus accounting for driver inconvenience aspects in the proposed real-time control
approach.
Moreover, note that a higher number of available vehicles leads to a slight in-
crease of the performed vehicle en-route diversion activities. This can be explained
by considering the fact that when more vehicles are available, they are likely to
be closely located to each other. When new requests arrive, reassigning requests to
those vehicles that are nearby becomes more attractive with regard to the overall
solution quality.
y y y
e e e
m m m
Ti Ti Ti
x x x
SMIXa SMIXb SMIXc
Fig. 8.15 Three request data sets with a high structural distortion
to the assumptions of the proposed forecasting approach, have a high structural dis-
tortion. Specifically, we generate four request data sets each having two individual
request arrival patterns that alternate each working day. The generated request data
sets are:
1. Request data set S MIXa : The first pattern is defined as S GEN RD = TD = 1.00
whereas no request arrivals are defined in the second pattern. Hence, on each
second working day, no requests arrive.
2. Request data set S MIXa2x : The first pattern is defined as S GEN RD = TD =
1.00 with doubled request arrival rates, i.e., doubled λ(tj ) values from Table 8.1
whereas no request arrivals are defined in the second pattern. These doubled
request arrival rates are used in order to generate average request arrival rates
which are similar to S GEN RD = TD = 1.00.
3. Request data set S MIXb : In this request data set, the first pattern is defined as a
variation of S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 in which all requests only arrive in subareas
located on the left side of the considered service region. The second pattern is
a variation of S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 in which all requests arrive in subareas
located on the right side of the considered service region.
4. Request data set S MIXc : The first pattern is defined as S GEN RD = TD = 1.00
whereas the second pattern is defined as S GEN RD = TD = 0.00. This request
data set is used to assess the performance of the used Chi-Square Goodness-of-
Fit test on a request data set in which requests arrive every day at all locations
but according to two different request arrival patterns.
The request data sets S MIXa , S MIXb , and S MIXc are illustrated in Fig. 8.15. In ad-
dition to the four request data sets above, we evaluate the structural distortion of
S GEN RD = TD = 1.00, RD = TD = 0.75, and of S REAL . For the minimum de-
manded Poisson quality of a valid cluster denoted by DCminPQ , we evaluate values
of DCminPQ ∈ {0, 0.05, 0.10, 0.20, 0.40}. For this purpose, in the applied Chi-Square
Goodness-of-Fit test the type I error parameter is set to α = DCminPQ . Moreover, in
order to generate clusters which, according to the assumptions of our forecasting ap-
228 8 Computational Results
proach, have a high probability that real customers will arrive, we apply a minimum
demanded dummy customer quality of DCminλ = 1.8.
The results of the structural distortion evaluation are illustrated in Table 8.5. As
can be seen in this table, a significant number of dummy customers can be gen-
erated in all request data sets in the setting DCminPQ = 0 in which no minimum
Poisson quality is demanded for the generated dummy customers. Therefore, one
could falsely presume a high suitability of the four request data sets (S MIXa to
S MIXc ) to generate well-usable stochastic knowledge using the proposed forecast-
ing approach. For example, by comparing S MIXa2x and S GEN RD = TD = 1.00,
the number of generated dummy customers is similar, i.e., 35 to 37. However, as
the applied Chi-Square Goodness-of-Fit test reveals, the generated average Poisson
quality of these four request data sets is significantly lower than that of the request
data sets S GEN and S REAL . Specifically, generated dummy customers of the three
request data sets S MIXa , S MIXa2x , and S MIXb have a significantly low Poisson qual-
ity of less than 0.01 % which indicates a high structural distortion for these request
data sets. Moreover, each of these three request data sets have a request realiza-
tion rate of at most 50 %. Specifically, in each of the corresponding clusters of the
generated dummy customers, request arrivals are observed on, at most, 50 % of the
nf working days. This can be explained by their request arrival patterns mentioned
above. These observed request realization rates which are significantly smaller than
the expected request realization rate defined by PS1.8 (X ≥ 1) = 83.5 % also indicate
that these three request data sets have a high structural distortion. Consequently, if
a minimum Poisson quality of DCminPQ = 0.05 is demanded, no dummy customers
can be generated at all in these three request data sets. In contrast to the three previ-
ously evaluated request data sets, the average Poisson quality of generated dummy
customers in S MIXc using DCminPQ = 0 is higher, i.e., about 5 % compared to an
average Poisson quality of less than 0.01 %. Nevertheless, this Poisson quality is
still about an order of magnitude smaller than in S GEN and S REAL . Moreover, an-
other indicator that S MIXc has an inferior Poisson quality is that the request real-
ization rate of corresponding clusters is on average 71 %, which is significantly
smaller than the expected request realization rate of 83.5 %. Hence, if a minimum
Poisson quality of DCminPQ = 0.05 is demanded, almost half of the 13 clusters are
discarded. Note that this is a significant difference to S GEN and S REAL in which
almost the same number of dummy customers are generated in DCminPQ = 0.00
and DCminPQ = 0.05. By further increasing the minimum demanded Poisson qual-
ity to DCminPQ = 0.40, only one dummy customer is generated in S MIXc while in the
evaluated request data sets of S GEN and S REAL only a slight decrease of the num-
ber of generated dummy customers occurs. Preliminary computational experiments
on S GEN and S REAL evaluating the previously mentioned values of DCminPQ showed
that the setting DCminPQ = 0.40 yields the best solution quality among the tested
values. Consequently, DCminPQ = 0.40 guarantees a low number of erroneously
erased clusters while ensuring that inappropriate clusters with a significantly inferior
Goodness-of-Fit quality are removed. Note that we refrained from evaluating values
for DCminPQ higher than 0.40 for two reasons. First, as mentioned above, this value
efficiently removes almost all dummy customers with a low Poisson quality in the
Table 8.5 Evaluating the structural distortion on different generated request data sets using different DCminPQ settings and DCminλ = 1.8
Request data set Minimum Poisson quality DCminPQ
0 0.05 0.10 0.20 0.40
S MIXa 8 0 0 0 0
<0.0001 – – – –
47 % 49 % 50 % – – – –
S MIXa2x 35 0 0 0 0
<0.0001 – – – –
47 % 49 % 50 % – – – –
S MIXb 19 0 0 0 0
<0.0001 – – – –
47 % 49 % 50 % – – – –
S MIXc 13 7 5 2 1
0.0495 0.1295 0.167 0.3162 0.5206
62 % 71 % 78 % 73 % 76 % 78 % 75 % 77 % 78 % 78 % 78 % 78 % 80 % 80 % 80 %
S GEN 15 15 15 15 15
RD = TD = 0.75 0.426 0.4314 0.5243 0.5747 0.6386
77 % 84 % 93 % 77 % 84 % 93 % 77 % 85 % 93 % 80 % 86 % 95 % 80 % 86 % 95 %
S GEN 37 37 37 37 35
8.6 Measuring Structural Distortion Using the Goodness-of-Fit Test
Note: Listed is the average number of generated dummy customers, their average Poisson quality, and the minimum, average, and maximum request realization
rate, i.e., the percentage of the nf working days on which at least one request arrives in one corresponding cluster of the generated dummy customers
229
230 8 Computational Results
35
30
25
S GEN 1.00
20 S GEN 0.75
15 S REAL
10
5
0
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
Minimum demanded Poisson quality
Fig. 8.16 Average number of generated dummy customers on S REAL , S GEN RD = TD = 0.75,
and S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 using DCminλ = 1.8
1.0
Average Poisson quality
0.8
0.2
0.0
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
Minimum demanded Poisson quality
Fig. 8.17 Average Poisson quality on S REAL , S GEN RD = TD = 0.75, and S GEN RD = TD = 1.00
using DCminλ = 1.8
tested request data sets that have a high structural distortion. Second, as illustrated
in Fig. 8.16, choosing higher DCminPQ values increasingly reduces the number of
dummy customers that can be generated, especially in S REAL so that a trade-off
arises between the resulting Poisson quality and the number of generated dummy
customers. Since setting DCminPQ to 0.40 results in an average Poisson quality of
more than 0.6 (see Fig. 8.17), we conclude that this setting allows for the generation
of clusters which sufficiently fulfill the demanded assumptions. Note that we deviate
from setting type I error to α = 0.05 on purpose (cf. Israel 2008, p. xxii, Sapsford
and Jupp 2006, p. 217) in order to only generate stochastic knowledge which has a
sufficient Poisson quality.
From the results presented above we conclude that the proposed approach using
the Chi-Square Goodness-of-Fit test to determine the Poisson quality of request data
sets is an efficient method for determining the structural distortion of an existing
request data set. Specifically, it allows for identifying request data sets with a high
8.7 Results of Generating Stochastic Knowledge for S REAL and S GEN 231
In this section, results of generating the dummy customers for the request data
classes S REAL and S GEN using the exact clustering approach proposed in Chap. 6
are presented. For generating this stochastic knowledge the previously derived min-
imum Poisson quality DCminPQ = 0.40 is used.
After all valid clusters are generated, a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) prob-
lem is solved in order to select the largest number of valid clusters which start ear-
liest so that no segments overlap as described in Sect. 6.2.2. All of these formulated
MIP problems are solved using ILOG CPLEX 11.0. With regard to the required
computational time, MIP problems with higher DCminλ values can be solved within
seconds while lower DCminλ values result in significantly longer computational
times due to the high number of valid clusters. Specifically, for the lowest evaluated
minimum demanded dummy customer quality DCminλ = 1.0, up to 2,362 valid clus-
ters were generated for S REAL and 3,272 valid clusters for S GEN RD = TD = 1.00.
Note that this cluster selection process can often be significantly accelerated. Specif-
ically, by using characteristics of the problem structure (see objective function de-
fined in Eq. (6.1) in Sect. 6.2.2), for the objective function value z of the opti-
mal MIP solution
with n dummy customers it holds that n · M − U ≤ z ≤ n · M
with U = i∈Cnlatest cistartTL where Cnlatest ⊆ C represents the set of the n clusters
of C which start latest. By using this property and consulting the currently known
upper bound during the solution process of an MIP problem, a new value of the
maximum number of selectable clusters defined by C max can be dynamically de-
termined. For example, assume M = 100,000, U = 18,000, and a currently upper
bound of 8,532,102, e.g., the objective function value of the currently best known
232 8 Computational Results
Table 8.6 Number of generated dummy customers on S REAL depending on the minimum required
dummy customer quality DCminλ using DCminPQ = 0.40
Quality of stochastic knowledge (DCminλ )
1.0 1.2 1.5 1.8 2.0
67.7 (13.4 %) 44.6 (12 %) 24.4 (10.4 %) 13.1 (10.1 %) 9.4 (7.7 %)
Note: Listed is the number of dummy customers generated by the proposed exact clustering
method. The values in brackets denote the additional percentage of dummy customers that were
generated compared to a heuristic greedy variant of the exact clustering approach
LP relaxation. Assuming further that the currently best known MIP solution has an
objective function value of 8,489,125, the current gap is 8,532,102−8,489,125
8,532,102 ≈ 5 %.
Using the described technique, it can be derived that the number of clusters that can
be selected is at most 85 since 8,532,102 < 86 · 100,000 − 18,000 = 8,582,000.
Hence, the objective function value of the known upper bound is at least reduced
to 8,500,000 so that the gap is reduced to at most 8,500,000−8,489,125
8,532,102 ≈ 0.12 %. We
utilize this technique in the conducted MIP problems by examining the currently
best known upper bound during the solution process and adjusting the value of pa-
rameter C max accordingly. In doing so, all conducted MIP problems can be solved to
optimality within two hours of computational time while most of the MIP problems
are solved within a few minutes.
In Tables 8.6 and 8.7, the number of dummy customers which were generated us-
ing our proposed exact cluster selection approach are presented. Note that in S REAL ,
for each of the 30 conducted days, the last corresponding nf = 60 working days
out of the available real-word request information were used. Hence, for each of
the 30 days of S REAL , five MIP problems were generated for the different DCminλ
values so that in total 150 MIP problems were solved for S REAL . Consequently,
Table 8.6 illustrates the average number of dummy customers generated per sce-
nario and DCminλ value. Since all days of S GEN are generated according to the
procedure described in Sect. 8.2.4.2, dummy customers are generated once for all
25 structural diversity settings and DCminλ value. These dummy customers are then
used in each of the 30 days. As can be seen in Table 8.7, specific DCminλ values
require a minimum level of structural diversity so that in total 87 MIP problems
were solved for S GEN . Moreover, the number of generated dummy customers is
compared to a heuristic clustering approach which generates clusters in the same
manner as the exact approach but greedily selects dummy customers whenever a
valid cluster has been found. Although the heuristic clustering approach only re-
quires about one minute for solving each dummy customer selection problem, the
results in Tables 8.6 and 8.7 show that it is reasonable to utilize the exact cluster-
ing approach since it yields on average 10.7 % more generated dummy customers
on S REAL and 6.4 % more on S GEN .
With regard to the base sizes which are used in the selected clusters, in S GEN it
can be observed that in request data sets with higher levels of structural diversity
the average number of base segments in a selected cluster becomes lower. Specif-
8.7 Results of Generating Stochastic Knowledge for S REAL and S GEN 233
Table 8.7 Number of generated dummy customers on S GEN depending on the level of structural
diversity and the minimum required dummy customer quality DCminλ using DCminPQ = 0.40
Structural Quality of stochastic knowledge (DCminλ )
diversity
RD TD 1.0 1.2 1.5 1.8 2.0
0.00 0.00 2 (0 %)
0.00 0.25 11 (10 %)
0.00 0.50 21 (23.5 %) 5 (0 %)
0.00 0.75 36 (9.1 %) 12 (9.1 %)
0.00 1.00 46 (15 %) 19 (11.8 %) 7 (40 %) 2 (0 %)
0.25 0.00 5 (0 %)
0.25 0.25 17 (6.3 %) 3 (0 %)
0.25 0.50 26 (8.3 %) 8 (14.3 %)
0.25 0.75 36 (9.1 %) 21 (5 %) 8 (0 %)
0.25 1.00 45 (9.8 %) 26 (13 %) 10 (11.1 %) 6 (0 %) 3 (0 %)
0.50 0.00 20 (0 %) 5 (0 %)
0.50 0.25 31 (3.3 %) 10 (0 %) 2 (0 %)
0.50 0.50 36 (9.1 %) 20 (0 %) 7 (0 %)
0.50 0.75 44 (7.3 %) 29 (7.4 %) 16 (6.7 %) 8 (0 %) 4 (0 %)
0.50 1.00 54 (17.4 %) 37 (23.3 %) 24 (20 %) 14 (0 %) 11 (0 %)
0.75 0.00 32 (0 %) 15 (0 %) 2 (0 %)
0.75 0.25 38 (8.6 %) 18 (5.9 %) 6 (0 %)
0.75 0.50 40 (11.1 %) 28 (7.7 %) 16 (0 %) 6 (0 %) 2 (0 %)
0.75 0.75 54 (10.2 %) 38 (11.8 %) 24 (4.3 %) 15 (0 %) 11 (0 %)
0.75 1.00 70 (9.4 %) 50 (16.3 %) 33 (3.1 %) 27 (8 %) 20 (5.3 %)
1.00 0.00 37 (2.8 %) 22 (4.8 %) 14 (0 %) 1 (0 %) 1 (0 %)
1.00 0.25 45 (4.7 %) 28 (0 %) 12 (0 %) 5 (0 %) 2 (0 %)
1.00 0.50 61 (15.1 %) 42 (10.5 %) 25 (8.7 %) 16 (14.3 %) 9 (0 %)
1.00 0.75 74 (12.1 %) 54 (12.5 %) 34 (3 %) 26 (13 %) 20 (11.1 %)
1.00 1.00 80 (14.3 %) 65 (14 %) 46 (9.5 %) 35 (12.9 %) 29 (3.6 %)
Note: Listed is the number of dummy customers generated by the proposed exact clustering
method. The values in brackets denote the additional percentage of dummy customers that were
generated compared to a heuristic greedy variant of the exact clustering approach. Empty cells
denote that no dummy customers were generated in this setting
more dummy clusters but also those which have a higher precision. This increases
the value of the generated stochastic knowledge. On S REAL , the average number of
base segments in a selected cluster ranges from 3.729 segments (DCminλ = 1.0) to
4 segments (DCminλ = 2.0).
In Table 8.8, the request realization rates of the generated stochastic knowledge
in all 26 request data sets are illustrated. Moreover, for each DCminλ setting, we
simulated 100 clusters. For each of these clusters, we generated 60 replications, i.e.,
60 days, of request arrivals using a Poisson process with λ = DCminλ and measured
the request realization rates. The obtained values as well as the arrival probability
of at least one request according to the Poisson distribution are also illustrated. The
results show that the request realization rates mainly depend on DCminλ but not
on the level of structural diversity. The similarity of the results of the 26 request
data sets to the simulated as well as estimated values underscores the fact that all
request data sets have a low structural distortion. Hence, we conclude that in both
evaluated request data classes request arrivals occur according to Poisson processes
to an extent which is sufficient to conduct the main computational experiments on
these request data classes in what follows.
Table 8.8 Request realization rates (in percents) in S GEN and S REAL depending on the parame-
ter DCminλ using DCminPQ = 0.40
Structural Quality of stochastic knowledge (DCminλ ) in percents
diversity
RD TD 1.0 1.2 1.5 1.8 2.0
0.00 0.00 60 61 62
0.00 0.25 58 62 67
0.00 0.50 60 64 72 65 70 73
0.00 0.75 58 65 77 67 71 77
0.00 1.00 60 65 75 67 72 77 72 77 83 83 86 88
0.25 0.00 60 63 67
0.25 0.25 60 64 68 68 69 70
0.25 0.50 58 64 72 68 72 75
0.25 0.75 58 64 77 67 71 78 75 79 83
0.25 1.00 60 65 78 65 71 77 75 79 83 82 85 88 87 88 88
0.50 0.00 60 64 70 67 68 72
0.50 0.25 58 64 72 68 72 78 77 78 80
0.50 0.50 60 65 75 67 72 78 73 78 83
0.50 0.75 60 65 78 65 72 78 75 80 85 82 87 92 82 87 92
0.50 1.00 60 66 77 67 73 78 73 80 85 80 85 92 85 89 93
0.75 0.00 58 65 75 67 71 75 78 79 80
0.75 0.25 60 65 70 65 72 78 72 78 85
0.75 0.50 60 66 77 63 71 78 75 79 87 78 83 87 85 89 93
0.75 0.75 57 65 73 63 72 78 75 80 85 80 86 95 85 89 92
0.75 1.00 58 65 77 65 71 83 73 80 87 77 85 92 83 89 93
1.00 0.00 57 65 70 63 72 78 72 78 85 87 87 87 87 87 87
1.00 0.25 58 65 70 65 71 80 73 79 83 83 86 88 90 90 90
1.00 0.50 60 66 77 65 72 87 75 80 87 80 85 90 85 89 93
1.00 0.75 58 65 80 65 72 82 72 79 88 80 85 90 82 89 95
1.00 1.00 58 66 80 63 72 80 73 80 90 82 86 92 83 88 95
S REAL 55 63 78 62 70 83 70 77 87 77 82 92 78 85 93
Simulated 48 64 80 58 71 87 62 77 88 72 83 93 75 86 97
PSDCminλ (X ≥ 1) 63.2 69.9 77.7 83.5 86.5
Note: Listed is the minimum, average, and maximum request realization rate, i.e., the percentage
of the nf working days on which at least one request arrives in one corresponding cluster of the
generated dummy customers
is more promising in the evaluated RDOPG application. Specifically, setting the pa-
rameter DCλrem to 0.50 instead of 0.25 allows a more flexible tour plan adaptation.
This results from the fact that when a smaller value for DCλrem is used, the probabil-
236 8 Computational Results
Table 8.9 Percentage improvements achieved by PROACTIVE10 vs. TIMELIMIT10 (i.e., im-
provements attained by utilizing stochastic knowledge ) on S REAL
Vehicles Quality of stochastic knowledge (DCminλ )
1.0 1.2 1.5 1.8 2.0
Note: Illustrated is the average improvement. The values in brackets denote the number of worse
test instances. Bold: best DCminλ . ↑: more late requests than in TIMELIMIT10
ity of a future request arrival in the corresponding cluster becomes too low to justify
keeping a vehicle there any longer. Hence, by using higher values for DCλrem , ve-
hicles are available at an earlier time point so that pending requests can be fulfilled
faster. In what follows, DCλrem is set to 0.50 for all experiments carried out using
PROACTIVE10.
The results that are attained by evaluating the real-world request data class are il-
lustrated in Table 8.9. Specifically, the table shows the additional improvements
attained by PROACTIVE10 compared to the results obtained by TIMELIMIT10.
Moreover, the number of worse test instances out of the 30 evaluated ones is illus-
trated. Specifically, according to the objective function described in Sect. 5.3.2.4,
solutions generated by PROACTIVE10 and TIMELIMIT10 are compared accord-
ing to the number of late requests (primary objective) and the total customer incon-
venience (secondary objective). Therefore, a solution generated by PROACTIVE10
is denoted as worse if either (a) it comprises more late requests or (b) it comprises
an equal number of late requests but a larger total variable customer inconvenience
than the one generated by TIMELIMIT10.
As indicated by the boldly printed results, under specific conditions, significant
improvements can be achieved by the additional use of the stochastic knowledge
although, as mentioned above, the underlying request distributions in S REAL are
completely unknown. Particularly, in scenarios with a larger fleet size (i.e., 10 and
12 vehicles), the application of the quadratic customer inconvenience function en-
ables a successful integration of the generated stochastic knowledge. This is due to
the fact that the over-linear increase of the quadratic inconvenience function leads
8.8 Performance Evaluation of the Pro-Active Real-Time Control Approach 237
to a lower number of requests that are significantly postponed in favor of other re-
quests as can be observed in the linear2X inconvenience function. Consequently,
generated tour plans are more balanced according to the resulting request response
times so that violations of the maximum allowed request response time can be less
observed in case the quadratic customer inconvenience is used. In contrast to this,
the application of the linear2X inconvenience function more frequently leads to dis-
torting effects, where some requests suddenly become extremely urgent due to an
imminent violation of the maximum allowed response time. Since in these scenar-
ios additional delays by further arriving requests may cause considerable deteri-
orations, tour plans generated if the quadratic inconvenience function is used are
more robust when delays caused by incorrectly forecasted requests or unexpected
additional requests occur. Moreover, reductions of resulting response times due to
correctly forecasted requests have more significant effects in the quadratic customer
inconvenience case.
In situations where more vehicles are available, the negative effect of incorrectly
forecasted request arrivals that becomes more likely with lower DCminλ values has
less impact on both tested inconvenience functions. Hence, also more uncertain in-
formation can be gainfully utilized so that the best results are achieved by using
smaller values of parameter DCminλ . In contrast, in scenarios where resource bot-
tlenecks can be observed (8 vehicles), the mentioned robustness of generated tour
plans when using a quadratic inconvenience function diminishes. Specifically, since
the limited resources are very busy with servicing the pending requests, the resulting
request response times increase towards the maximum allowed response time for a
large number of requests. Therefore, as depicted above for the linear2X customer
inconvenience case, an additional delay caused by incorrectly forecasted requests
often results in a substantial increase of customer inconvenience caused by the high
penalty costs (see Sect. 5.3.2.4). Consequently, no improvement can be attained for
all tested settings with the smallest fleet size. Hence, in case of a small fleet size,
the integration of stochastic knowledge is reasonable only if the stochastic knowl-
edge about future requests possesses a certain value which we consider later in this
section. Otherwise, the attempt to integrate stochastic knowledge often causes dete-
riorating effects which lead to a significant postponement of pending requests and
thus to a higher number of late requests and a reduced solution quality.
The described circumstances can also be observed by analyzing the distribution
of the attained request response times in the experiments. Specifically, when using
a small fleet size, Fig. 8.18 illustrates that the utilization of uncertain stochastic
knowledge (i.e., setting DCminλ = 1.0) further increases the workload of the already
very busy vehicles. Since the uncertainty of this knowledge does not allow for a
faster service of many requests, a high number of late serviced customers occurs
which can be observed by the high peak that occurs shortly before the maximum
allowed request response time of R mrt = 3,600 seconds. This is especially true when
the linear2X customer inconvenience function is used which, as mentioned above,
tends to postpone some requests in order to achieve a better average request response
time which becomes problematic when future requests unexpectedly arrive. As can
be seen in Fig. 8.19, the use of more certain stochastic knowledge generated by
238 8 Computational Results
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, PROACTIVE10
serviced requests
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10
quadratic, PROACTIVE10
Fig. 8.18 Request response times on S REAL using 8 vehicles and DCminλ = 1.0 grouped by inter-
vals of 50 seconds
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, PROACTIVE10
serviced requests
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10
quadratic, PROACTIVE10
Fig. 8.19 Request response times on S REAL using 8 vehicles and DCminλ = 2.0 grouped by inter-
vals of 50 seconds
higher DCminλ values may reduce these negative effects. Nevertheless, due to the
restricted fleet size, the busy vehicle situation remains so that no improvements can
be attained in this situation either.
In contrast, in scenarios where 10 vehicles are available, a high number of re-
quests that are almost late can still be observed when uncertain stochastic knowledge
is utilized, but to a significantly lower extent compared to the 8 vehicle case (see
Figs. 8.20 and 8.21). Hence, if the linear inconvenience function is used, improve-
ments of up to 1.0 % can be achieved whereas improvements of up to 2.79 % can be
achieved if the quadratic inconvenience function is used. When 12 vehicles are used,
the use of more uncertain stochastic knowledge can gain significant improvements.
Especially if the quadratic inconvenience function is used, a meaningful number of
requests can be serviced earlier (see Figs. 8.22 and 8.23). As can be seen in Ta-
ble 8.9, significant improvements in the solution quality can be attained for both
evaluated inconvenience functions. Specifically, if the linear inconvenience func-
tion is used, improvements of up to 1.7 % can be achieved whereas improvements
of up to 7.93 % can be achieved if the quadratic inconvenience function is used. The
complete figures depicting the results of the computational experiments on S REAL
are illustrated in the Appendix in Sect. C.1.
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, PROACTIVE10
serviced requests
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10
quadratic, PROACTIVE10
Fig. 8.20 Request response times on S REAL using 10 vehicles and DCminλ = 1.0 grouped by
intervals of 50 seconds
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, PROACTIVE10
serviced requests
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10
quadratic, PROACTIVE10
Fig. 8.21 Request response times on S REAL using 10 vehicles and DCminλ = 2.0 grouped by
intervals of 50 seconds
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, PROACTIVE10
serviced requests
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10
quadratic, PROACTIVE10
Fig. 8.22 Request response times on S REAL using 12 vehicles and DCminλ = 1.0 grouped by
intervals of 50 seconds
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, PROACTIVE10
serviced requests
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10
quadratic, PROACTIVE10
Fig. 8.23 Request response times on S REAL using 12 vehicles and DCminλ = 2.0 grouped by
intervals of 50 seconds
240 8 Computational Results
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
07:30 08:00 08:30 09:00 09:30 10:00 10:30 11:00
Time
Fig. 8.24 Request arrival rates in the 72 subareas during the considered planning horizon in
S REAL . All values are calculated using a simple moving average of 30 minutes
stochastic knowledge solely generated from past request information of the same
weekday did not result in any significant improvements either.
Besides the low structural diversity, individual days of S REAL may possess struc-
tural differences due to its real-world character. Specifically, request arrivals in this
request data set may contain additional request arrival structures so that the request
arrivals cannot entirely be represented by a set of time-space Poisson processes that
are constant from day to day. Therefore, stochastic knowledge generated by using
the last nf = 60 weekdays may represent a rather unreliable prediction of future re-
quests. However, as shown by our analysis in Sect. 8.6, it could not be determined
that S REAL possesses a high structural distortion. This is underscored by another
∗
test study in which a request data set denoted as S REAL is generated based on the
request arrival characteristics observed in S REAL as shown in Fig. 8.24. Therefore,
∗
possible existing day-to-day differences of S REAL are eliminated so that S REAL has
a low level of structural distortion with certainty. Computational results conducted
∗
on S REAL show a comparable solution quality to the one obtained on S REAL . Hence,
we conclude that if there were any day-to-day differences in S REAL , they would
only represent a minor reason for the limited improvements attained by PROAC-
TIVE10 in comparison to those attained by TIMELIMIT10.
With regard to our definition of structural quality depending on structural dis-
tortion and structural diversity, we conclude that a low structural distortion is a
prerequisite in order to efficiently apply the proposed forecasting method and the
pro-active real-time control approach. As shown at the example of S REAL , we fur-
ther state that a low structural diversity generally impedes an efficient utilization
of stochastic knowledge in pro-active real-time control approaches. Accordingly,
we state that the structural quality of request data mainly depends on the structural
diversity. Hence, S REAL also has a low structural quality which limits the value
of attainable stochastic knowledge thereof. Crucial characteristics of S REAL which
lead to the low structural diversity and hence the limited improvements that were
attained are further analyzed in Sect. 8.9.
In this section, we present the computational results obtained by applying the deter-
ministic and the pro-active real-time control approach on the 25 generated request
sets of the request data class S GEN .
In Table 8.10, the additional improvements attained by PROACTIVE10 in com-
parison to TIMELIMIT10 for all structural diversity settings of S GEN as well as the
number of worse test instances out of the corresponding 30 test instances are illus-
trated. From the results in this table, it can be derived that the level of structural di-
versity significantly influences the improvement rates attainable by PROACTIVE10.
This can be explained by the fact that if higher levels of structural diversity are
present in a request data set, stochastic knowledge has a higher value. Specifically,
since in this case request arrival rates in individual regions strongly vary during the
242
Table 8.10 Percentage improvements achieved by PROACTIVE10 vs. TIMELIMIT10 (i.e., improvements attained by utilizing stochastic knowledge) on S GEN
Vehicles RegionDiversity TimeDiversity (TD)
(RD) 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00
0.25 0.87 % (1.0, ∗) 2.37 % (1.0, ∗) 4.50 % (1.0, 2) 6.11 % (1.0, 4) 6.38 % (1.2, 3)
0.50 5.48 % (1.0, 2) 6.21 % (1.0, 1) 8.05 % (1.0, 0) 9.04 % (1.2, 0) 11.34 % (1.5, 0)
0.75 6.09 % (1.0, 1) 8.46 % (1.0, 0) 9.97 % (1.0, 1) 15.85 % (1.0, 0) 20.27 % (1.2, 0)
1.00 5.81 % (1.0, 3) 9.19 % (1.0, 1) 11.86 % (1.2, 0) 17.99 % (1.2, 0) 26.72 % (1.5, 0)
Computational Results
Table 8.10 (Continued)
Vehicles RegionDiversity TimeDiversity (TD)
(RD) 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00
1.00 11.48 % (1.0, 2) 15.40 % (1.0, 0) 24.00 % (1.0, 0) 33.72 % (1.0, 0) 47.24 % (1.2, 0)
Note: Illustrated is the average improvement. The values in brackets denote the best DCminλ value and the number of worse test instances (∗: more than 9 worse).
↑: more total late requests than in TIMELIMIT10, ↓: less total late requests than in TIMELIMIT10
243
244 8 Computational Results
30%
25%
8 vehicles
20%
Improvement
10 vehicles
12 vehicles
15%
Quadratic (8 vehicles)
10% Quadratic (10 vehicles)
Quadratic (12 vehicles)
5%
0%
0.00/0.00 0.25/0.25 0.50/0.50 0.75/0.75 1.00/1.00
RD and TD structural diversity values
Fig. 8.25 Attainable improvements on S GEN at different levels of structural diversity using lin-
ear2X customer inconvenience
50%
45%
40%
8 vehicles
35%
Improvement
10 vehicles
30%
12 vehicles
25%
Quadratic (8 vehicles)
20%
Quadratic (10 vehicles)
15%
10%
Quadratic (12 vehicles)
5%
0%
0.00/0.00 0.25/0.25 0.50/0.50 0.75/0.75 1.00/1.00
RD and TD structural diversity values
Fig. 8.26 Attainable improvements on S GEN at different levels of structural diversity using
quadratic customer inconvenience
day, vehicle positions resulting from last serviced requests do not represent a good
positioning for future request arrivals. Hence, future arriving requests are likely to
be serviced with a high response time and thus a high customer inconvenience. It
is worth mentioning that increasing both levels of structural diversity conjectures
a quadratic dependency between the level of structural diversity and attainable im-
provements, independent of the utilized customer inconvenience function and fleet
size (see Figs. 8.25 and 8.26).
In Figs. 8.27 and 8.28, a visual analysis of two request data sets of S GEN is
performed. In these tables, the impacts of high levels of structural diversity on tem-
poral and spatial changes in request arrival rates can be clearly observed. Specif-
ically, according to the values defined in S GEN (see again Fig. 8.4), the highest
request arrival rates occur in different subareas during the day which are also lo-
cated far away from each other. Therefore, the subarea with the highest request ar-
8.8 Performance Evaluation of the Pro-Active Real-Time Control Approach 245
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
07:30 08:00 08:30 09:00 09:30 10:00 10:30 11:00
Time
Fig. 8.27 Request arrival rates in the 72 subareas during the considered planning horizon in
S GEN RD = TD = 1.00. All values are calculated using a simple moving average of 30 minutes
Request arrivals per subarea (SMA30 minutes)
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
07:30 08:00 08:30 09:00 09:30 10:00 10:30 11:00
Time
Fig. 8.28 Request arrival rates in the 72 subareas during the considered planning horizon in
S GEN RD = TD = 0.50. All values are calculated using a simple moving average of 30 minutes
rival rates significantly changes in the considered service area during the day. Note
that this significantly distinguishes S GEN from the request data class S REAL (see
again Fig. 8.24). Since the idle vehicle waiting strategy that is applied in TIME-
LIMIT10 relies on the value of these positions, TIMELIMIT10 is significantly
outperformed by PROACTIVE10 which efficiently repositions vehicles to future
request-likely areas in advance if high levels of structural diversity are present. This
has an even higher impact since the highest request arrival rates are about twice as
246 8 Computational Results
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, PROACTIVE10
serviced requests
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10
quadratic, PROACTIVE10
Fig. 8.29 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.5 for RD = 0.00 and
TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, PROACTIVE10
serviced requests
quadratic, TIMELIMIT10
quadratic, PROACTIVE10
Fig. 8.30 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.2 for RD = 0.00
and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
3 Available at http://extras.springer.com.
248 8 Computational Results
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
linear2X, PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.5
serviced requests
Fig. 8.31 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 for
RD = 1.00 and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
linear2X, PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.5
serviced requests
Fig. 8.32 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DC min λ
= 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 for
RD = 1.00 and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
linear2X, TIMELIMIT10
linear2X, PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
linear2X, PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.5
serviced requests
Fig. 8.33 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 for
RD = 1.00 and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
vice versa. Second, the number of available resources (i.e., the fleet size) directly
influences the minimum quality of the stochastic knowledge required for attaining
promising results. Specifically, if an increased fleet size is available, the minimum
required structural quality is decreased since the negative effects of incorrectly fore-
casted requests diminish due to lower utilization of the vehicles.
structural diversity and hence does not allow for efficiently integrating stochastic
knowledge due to the existing low structural quality, the value 1 defines a theoretical
upper bound on the maximum structural diversity which a request data set can have.
Based on the insights of the previous section, the main idea of the dosd is that a
high degree of structural diversity is present if there exists significant spatial vari-
ations in request arrivals in the subareas during the considered planning horizon.
Specifically, if the subareas in which high request arrival rates subsequently occur
are located far away from each other, the value of using stochastic knowledge and
hence the dosd becomes high. Moreover, also the number of requests that occur in
the individual subareas is important. Specifically, the more requests occur in a sub-
area, the higher the impact on the solution quality since these requests are serviced
with a high response time leading to a high customer inconvenience. Furthermore,
changes in the request arrival rates in the subareas change the vehicles’ positions
within the considered service area accordingly. Therefore, in order for a request
data set to obtain a high dosd, changes in the request arrival rates should occur only
after a certain time period so that vehicles will have traveled to another position in
the meantime.
For a given request data set, the dosd is determined as follows. The rate param-
eters λ(ps ) of the time-space Poisson processes attached to each segment s ∈ S
are calculated as described in Sect. 6.2.1 for a specified time frame of the given
request data set, e.g., the last nf working days. The considered planning horizon
of the corresponding real-world application is divided into T time periods with a
y
length of m minutes each. For each time period t ∈ {1, . . . , T }, the tuple (btx , bt )
defines the geographical position of the barycenter of requests that have arrived in
time period t according to the subarea separation depicted in Fig. 6.1. Moreover, nt
gives the number of requests which occurred on average in time period t in the
considered time frame of the request data set. Furthermore, we assume that the con-
sidered service area is divided into x · y subareas. In order to calculate the dosd,
we track how the barycenter of request arrivals changes between consecutive time
periods. Specifically, the Euclidean distance between the barycenters of two consec-
utive time periods t1 , t2 ∈ T is computed and weighted with the number of request
arrivals of t2 given by nt2 . By calculating the weighted distances for all time pe-
riod pairs and normalizing the sumof weighted distances with an upper bound on
the distance defined by maxDist = x 2 + y 2 , we obtain the following definition of
the dosd:
T −1
y y
t=1 nt+1 · (bt − bt+1 ) + (bt − bt+1 )
x x 2 2
dosd = T −1
maxDist · t=1 nt+1
Note that since in our application all vehicles start their tour at an identical depot,
the first time period is used to determine individual starting positions of the vehicles.
However, since in many request data sets considered in our RDOPG applications
only a small portion of all requests arrive in the first time period, n1 is comparably
small and its omission does not cause significant changes to the calculated dosd.
According to this definition, variations in request arrivals of a given request data set
8.9 The Degree of Structural Diversity 251
are quantified by the weighted length of an approximate path that the majority of
the vehicle fleet travels in order to service the requests. Consequently, the larger the
resulting distances between consecutive barycenters and the higher the number of
requests, the more valuable the utilization of stochastic knowledge becomes. This
is due to the fact that in such situations a deterministic real-time control approach
is increasingly forced to relocate a larger number of vehicles in each time period
which is likely to result in higher response times and hence increased customer in-
convenience. Therefore, parameter m is approximately set to the average duration
during which the vehicles have completed their travel activity between two consec-
utive barycenters.
In order to assess the practicability of the proposed dosd, we evaluate it on the
request data classes S REAL and S GEN . Note that all request data sets of these request
data classes have a comparable number of requests. Consequently, if a small number
of vehicles is available, they are highly utilized while a large number of available
vehicles results into the vehicles becoming less utilized in all of these request data
sets. Hence, the values of the dosd calculated for the request data sets of both request
data classes are comparable, i.e., the stochastic knowledge which can be generated
from them has a similar value. Specifically, different request data sets with a similar
dosd value are likely to generate a similar improvement in the solution quality when
the pro-active real-time control approach is used compared to using the determinis-
tic real-time control approach. The advantage that the dosd has over computational
experiments is that it makes an instant estimation of the efficiency of pro-active real-
time control approaches on given request data sets possible. In order to statistically
prove the above statement, we directly compare the respective dosd value calcu-
lated for each request data set of both request data classes with the improvement
rates which have been attained by using PROACTIVE10 in the previously described
computational experiments. In this comparison, we use the best improvement rates
attained among the evaluated parameter settings for DCminλ which are illustrated
in Tables 8.9 and 8.10. As presented in the computational experiments, these best
improvement rates were attained by conducting the five DCminλ settings on each
of the 25 request data sets of S GEN as well as for the request data set of S REAL .
In order to analyze the correlation between both variables, we apply six linear re-
gression models in total—one for each of both customer inconvenience functions
combined with each of the three evaluated fleet sizes on the 25 request data sets of
S GEN . For calculating the dosd, we set m = 30 resulting in eight time periods of
the considered planning horizon which has a duration of four hours as mentioned
above.
The results of this evaluation are illustrated in Figs. 8.34 and 8.35. As can be
seen from these figures, the proposed dosd is an effective measure for determin-
ing the structural quality of request data sets and can therefore identify scenar-
ios in which the application of stochastic knowledge is advantageous. Specifically,
for S GEN , a detailed correlation analysis using the Pearson product-moment cor-
relation coefficient r (cf. Rodgers and Nicewander 1988) provides values between
0.9469 and 0.9647 for the linear2X customer inconvenience function and values
between 0.9161 and 0.9491 for the quadratic customer inconvenience function,
252 8 Computational Results
30%
5%
0%
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12
dosd
Fig. 8.34 Results of the degree of structural diversity using the linear2X customer inconvenience
function
50%
R2 = 0.9007
SGEN, 8 vehicles
40% SREAL, 8 vehicles
R2 = 0.8849 SGEN, 10 vehicles
Improvement
SREAL, 10 vehicles
30% SGEN, 12 vehicles
R2 = 0.8393 SREAL, 12 vehicles
Linear (SGEN, 8 vehicles)
20%
Linear (SGEN, 10 vehicles)
Linear (SGEN, 12 vehicles)
10%
0%
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12
dosd
Fig. 8.35 Results of the degree of structural diversity using the quadratic customer inconvenience
function
20
linear2X
Number of available vehicles
18 linear2X (estimated)
16 quadratic
14 quadratic (estimated)
PROACTIVE10 is
12 recommended for
10 quadratic
PROACTIVE10 is
8
recommended for
6 linear2X and quadratic
4
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12 0.14
dosd
Fig. 8.36 Managerial recommendations based on the dosd and S GEN demanding a minimum im-
provement of 10 %
20
linear2X
Number of available vehicles
18
linear2X (estimated)
16 quadratic
14 quadratic (estimated)
PROACTIVE10 is
12 recommended for
10 quadratic
PROACTIVE10 is
8
recommended for
6 linear2X and quadratic
4
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12 0.14
dosd
Fig. 8.37 Managerial recommendations based on the dosd and S GEN demanding a minimum im-
provement of 15 %
also a suitable measure for determining the structural quality of other request data
sets. According to the attained results, it can be concluded that a dosd ≥ 0.06 of a
request data set strongly indicates that the existing structural quality enables an ad-
vantageous application of the proposed pro-active real-time control approach on this
request data set. In accordance with the computational results provided in Sect. 8.8,
this is particularly true if a larger fleet size is available. Moreover, since the attain-
able improvements utilized in this evaluation represent the best parameter settings
of the tested ones, appropriate parameter values for generating stochastic knowledge
and for utilizing the proposed pro-active real-time control approach can be chosen
according to the dosd of a given request data set.
Based on the results of the dosd on S GEN , a two-dimensional matrix providing
managerial recommendations can be derived. Specifically, Figs. 8.36, 8.37, and 8.38
illustrate the scenario constellations in which the utilization of the pro-active
254 8 Computational Results
20
linear2X
Number of available vehicles
18 linear2X (estimated)
16 quadratic
quadratic (estimated)
14
PROACTIVE10 is
12 recommended for
10 quadratic
PROACTIVE10 is
8 recommended for
6 linear2X and quadratic
4
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12 0.14
dosd
Fig. 8.38 Managerial recommendations based on the dosd and S GEN demanding a minimum im-
provement of 20 %
Table 8.11 Evaluated response time thresholds and penalty costs included in the objective func-
tion for vehicle en-route diversion activities depending on the applied customer inconvenience
function
Response time threshold [seconds] Objective function penalty costs
linear2X quadratic
represented by DCminλ = 2.0 for the linear2X as well as for the quadratic customer
inconvenience function are used. The upper graph in Fig. 8.39 shows the performed
number of vehicle en-route diversion activities if different threshold parameter set-
tings are applied to linear2X. In the same figure, the respective changes in the
objective function value are presented in the lower graph. Analogously, Fig. 8.40
shows the results that have been achieved using the quadratic customer inconve-
nience function. Note that for the approach TIMELIMIT10, the number of vehicle
en-route diversion activities is recorded according to the rules described in Sect. 8.5.
For the approach PROACTIVE10, a change of a dummy customer to a real request
is not counted as a vehicle en-route diversion activity when a dummy customer is
currently assigned as the first request to a vehicle. Specifically, due to our defined
utilization of dummy customer requests, the purpose of dummy customers is to act
as place-holders for an expected number of real requests arriving in the correspond-
ing request-likely area. When a vehicle is currently traveling to the location of a
dummy customer request and its next request is changed to a real request, it is likely
that this change happens due to the fact that a real customer request which is located
near the dummy customer has recently arrived. Therefore, since it is the purpose of
dummy customers to guide vehicles into request-likely areas without knowing the
exact position of arriving requests, such a change is not considered as a deterioration
of the transportation process. It is assumed that drivers are notified by the on-board
units when they are currently traveling to a dummy customer so that they are aware
of a likely change of this dummy customer request. Similarly, a change of the first
assigned request, due to the removal of a dummy customer from the tour plan (see
Sect. 6.3.1), is not counted as a vehicle en-route diversion activity either. Neverthe-
less, a reassignment of a still active dummy customer to another dummy customer is
considered as a vehicle en-route diversion activity that is penalized in the objective
function and also recorded in the computational results (see Table 8.12).
In Figs. 8.41 and 8.42, the request response times resulting from the application
of particular penalty costs are illustrated. As can be seen, higher penalty costs lead to
8.10 Driver Inconvenience Aspects in the Real-Time Control Approaches 257
6.00
5.34
First request reassignments per vehicle
5.00
4.53
3.82 4.00
4.00
3.53
3.32
TIMELIMIT10
3.00
2.42 2.39
PROACTIVE10
2.00
1.59 1.59
0.79 0.71
1.00
0.45
0.3811 0.3927
0.40
0.3645
0.3486 0.3486 0.3464 0.3480 0.3546
0.35
Objective function value
0.3089
0.2830 0.2977
0.30 0.2738
0.2686 0.2659 0.2656 0.2692
0.25 TIMELIMIT10
0.20 PROACTIVE10
0.15
0.10
0.05
0.00
0.0 0.01 0.02 0.05 0.1 0.2 0.5 1.0
Penalty value
Fig. 8.39 Results of limiting vehicle en-route diversion activities on S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 with
DCminλ = 2.0 using the linear2X customer inconvenience function and a fleet size of 10 vehicles
longer response times which results in a later service of requests. Note that this is in
accordance with the results obtained in Sect. 8.5. Following the results presented in
both figures and Table 8.12, it can be observed that both proposed real-time control
approaches often make use of vehicle en-route diversion activities when vehicle en-
route diversion activities can be performed at no additional costs. Note that this is
similar to the results observed on S REAL presented in Sect. 8.5.
Furthermore, the results show that our proposed threshold-based approach can
be successfully applied in order to limit the number of performed vehicle en-route
activities. Interestingly, forbidding vehicle en-route diversion activities that would
gain only low objective function improvements significantly reduces the number of
vehicle en-route diversion activities but leads to only slight increases of the attained
average customer inconvenience. Moreover, in scenarios where the linear2X cus-
tomer inconvenience function is used, applying small threshold parameter values of
up to 0.02 does not increase the attained customer inconvenience at all but rather
258 8 Computational Results
6.00
5.26
First request reassignments per vehicle
5.24 5.14
5.00
4.64
1.781.82
2.00
1.00
0.28 0.23
0.02 0.00
0.00
0.0 0.0001 0.0004 0.0025 0.01 0.04 0.25 1.0
Penalty value
0.25
0.1930
0.20
Objective function value
0.1748
0.05
0.00
0.0 0.0001 0.0004 0.0025 0.01 0.04 0.25 1.0
Penalty value
Fig. 8.40 Results of limiting vehicle en-route diversion activities on S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 with
DCminλ = 2.0 using the quadratic customer inconvenience function and a fleet size of 10 vehicles
even reduces it while significantly reducing the number of vehicle en-route diver-
sion activities. This can be explained by the fact that disallowing low-improving
vehicle en-route diversion activities does not have a significant impact on the so-
lution quality. In contrast, by prohibiting these vehicle en-route diversion activities
vehicles are less disturbed while traveling to their next request so that, in the end,
this may even lead to a slight improvement in the achieved customer inconvenience.
As a positive effect, the number of vehicle en-route diversion activities can be sig-
nificantly reduced at the cost of negligible drawbacks while significantly reducing
driver inconvenience.
When vehicle en-route diversion activities are allowed without additional penalty
costs, the number of performed vehicle en-route diversion activities is significantly
higher in PROACTIVE10 compared to TIMELIMIT10. This is especially true for
the quadratic customer inconvenience function. This can be explained by the fact
that due to the quadratic increase of customer inconvenience, even many small ve-
8.10 Driver Inconvenience Aspects in the Real-Time Control Approaches 259
Table 8.12 Results for TIMELIMIT10 and PROACTIVE10 under different penalty costs on
S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 using 10 vehicles
Penalty TIMELIMIT10 PROACTIVE10
#ra per vehicle Objective function value #ra per vehicle Objective function value
Note: Listed is the average number of first request reassignments (#ra) per vehicle and the average
objective function value based on the applied penalty costs for vehicle en-route diversion activities.
For both values, the percentage improvement of the respective penalty threshold parameter setting,
presented in brackets, is compared to TIMELIMIT10 in which all vehicle en-route diversion activ-
ities are allowed
0.0
0.01
0.02
serviced requests
0.05
0.1
0.2
0.5
1.0
Fig. 8.41 Impacts of assigning penalty costs to vehicle en-route diversion activities on request
response times attained by PROACTIVE10 on S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 using 10 vehicles and the
linear2X customer inconvenience function grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
0.0
0.0001
0.0004
serviced requests
0.0025
0.01
0.04
0.25
1.0
Fig. 8.42 Impacts of assigning penalty costs to vehicle en-route diversion activities on request
response times attained by PROACTIVE10 on S GEN RD = TD = 1.00 using 10 vehicles and the
quadratic customer inconvenience function grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
parable at 0.05 in the linear2X case and 0.04 in the quadratic case. From these
threshold parameter values up to the highest tested threshold parameter values,
the attained improvements of customer inconvenience by PROACTIVE10 com-
pared to TIMELIMIT10 remain constant at about 21–22 % in the linear2X case
and 35–38 % in the quadratic case. Hence, for these threshold parameter values,
PROACTIVE10 provides significant improvements with regard to the achievable
customer inconvenience while attaining a level of driver inconvenience reduction
which is at least as high as is achieved by TIMELIMIT10.
To sum up, the application of the pro-active real-time control approach PROAC-
TIVE10 is able to significantly reduce customer inconvenience and driver incon-
venience at the same time compared to TIMELIMIT10. With regard to the effects
of setting the introduced threshold parameter on driver inconvenience, which is the
focus of this section, different recommendations of setting this parameter in ac-
cordance to the pursued aim can be derived from the results of this computational
study:
• If the minimization of customer inconvenience is the only aim and driver in-
convenience aspects can be completely neglected, allowing all vehicle en-route
diversion activities is generally advisable. Furthermore, as mentioned above, if
the linear2X customer inconvenience function is used, small applied threshold
parameter values can slightly improve the solution quality of TIMELIMIT10 as
well as of PROACTIVE10. Furthermore, the use of these small threshold pa-
rameter values also significantly reduces driver inconvenience. In this case, using
PROACTIVE10 achieves improvements of up to 23.8 % or 39.3 % when the lin-
ear2X or the quadratic customer inconvenience function is used, respectively.
• If the minimization of customer inconvenience and driver inconvenience are both
important, moderate values for the threshold parameter are recommended. By
utilizing a threshold parameter value of 0.1 if the linear2X customer inconve-
nience function is applied and 0.04 if the quadratic customer inconvenience func-
tion is used, vehicle en-route diversion activities can be reduced by more than
50 % while customer inconvenience is only increased by 1.9 % (linear2X) or
7.1 % (quadratic). This still results in an attainable improvement by PROAC-
TIVE10 of 21.5 % using the linear2X customer inconvenience function and
34.7 % if the quadratic customer inconvenience function is applied compared
to TIMELIMIT10 where all vehicle en-route diversion activities are allowed.
• If the minimization of driver inconvenience is highly prioritized, forbidding all
vehicle en-route diversion activities is attainable by setting the threshold param-
eter to 1.0 or higher. In this case, the customer inconvenience is significantly
increased in TIMELIMIT10 and PROACTIVE10. Nevertheless, also in this case
PROACTIVE10 provides a significantly reduced customer inconvenience com-
pared to TIMELIMIT10. In addition to this, the results achieved by PROAC-
TIVE10 are still better than the ones attained by TIMELIMIT10 in which all vehi-
cle en-route diversion activities are permitted. In particular, PROACTIVE10 still
achieves a significant improvement of customer inconvenience of 11.4 % or
19.7 % if the linear2X or if the quadratic customer inconvenience function is
applied, respectively.
262 8 Computational Results
conducted. This evaluation revealed that this approach allows for efficiently identi-
fying request data sets which have a high structural distortion. Moreover, informa-
tion on the stochastic knowledge generated using S REAL and S GEN were provided.
In the main computational experiments, the results from the proposed exact clus-
tering method with regard to the generated stochastic knowledge were presented.
This generated knowledge was then used to analyze the improvements which can be
additionally attained by utilizing the pro-active real-time control approach PROAC-
TIVE10 compared to TIMELIMIT10 on S REAL and S GEN . This analysis was carried
out in order to answer the first two questions posed in Sect. 1.3.1:
Question 1: Does the integration of information about expected future request ar-
rivals into a deterministic real-time control approach, thus forming a pro-active real-
time control approach, allow for a significant improvement of the solution quality
by reducing customer inconvenience?
Answer: As shown in the computational experiments in Sect. 8.8, utilizing the gen-
erated stochastic knowledge in the proposed pro-active real-time control approach
makes it possible to significantly reduce customer inconvenience and thus signifi-
cantly improve the solution quality. Specifically, on the request data class S REAL ,
depending on the available fleet size and utilized customer inconvenience func-
tion, improvements of up to 7.93 % were achieved by PROACTIVE10 compared
to TIMELIMIT10. However, in problem instances with a limited fleet size of 8 ve-
hicles, no improvements could be attained at all. On the request data class S GEN , in
almost all tested request data sets comprising different levels of structural diversity,
significant improvements were achieved. In the setting with the highest tested levels
of structural diversity represented by RD = TD = 1.00, 19.51 % to 26.72 % of ad-
ditional improvement could be attained under the linear2X customer inconvenience
function depending on the fleet size. In scenarios in which the quadratic customer in-
convenience function was utilized, improvements of between 29.86 % and 47.24 %
were achieved. According to the observed differences regarding attainable improve-
ments on S REAL and S GEN by PROACTIVE10 we can conclude that the existence
of specific characteristics in the request data sets fosters improvements that can be
attained by utilizing pro-active real-time control approaches. In this book, we de-
noted these characteristics, which are discussed in what follows, as the structural
quality of a request data set.
Question 2: If question 1 yields a positive result, under which criteria does this
apply? For example, what impact does the structural quality of existing request data
and the resulting stochastic knowledge which is generated on the basis of this re-
quest data have on the solution quality? Furthermore, which characteristics are suit-
able for measuring the structural quality of available request data?
Answer: In Sects. 8.8 and 8.9, it was shown that certain prerequisites need to be
fulfilled in a request data set in order to enable PROACTIVE10 to attain signif-
icant improvements. Hence, when dealing with the coordination of the operative
264 8 Computational Results
the pending requests in scenarios where larger fleet sizes are available. Hence,
the minimum required structural quality of a request data set decreases since an
incorrectly forecasted request does not cause significant deteriorations in the ex-
ecution of the transportation process.
We conclude that the structural distortion of a request data set depends on the
applied forecasting approach while the structural diversity represents a general cri-
terion which significantly determines attainable improvements by using pro-active
real-time control approaches. Therefore, with regard to structural distortion, it is
possible to also efficiently derive and utilize stochastic knowledge for additional
request data sets which are classified as having a high structural distortion in our
forecasting approach by extending the proposed forecasting approach. Moreover,
the structural diversity of the request data set mainly determines its structural qual-
ity if a low structural distortion is present. Hence, structural diversity was further
evaluated in this book. Besides the request data class S GEN for which the level of
structural diversity can be defined during the generation of the individual request
data sets, two methods were proposed for analyzing the structural diversity of given
request data sets. First, according to the qualitative assessment of request data sets
performed by the visual analysis of S REAL in Fig. 8.24 and S GEN in Figs. 8.27
and 8.28, we concluded that request data sets with a high structural quality have
high variations in request arrival rates in the subareas during the day which allows
for an efficient application of the proposed pro-active real-time control approach. In
order to further define structural quality, we introduced the degree of structural di-
versity (dosd) for quantitatively measuring the structural diversity of given request
data sets (see Sect. 8.9). The effectiveness of this measure was evaluated by ana-
lyzing the dosd values for all 25 request data sets of the request data class S GEN .
Specifically, linear regression models analyzing the correlation between the dosd
and the improvement attained in the computational experiments were applied to
both customer inconvenience functions and the three tested fleet sizes. The resulting
correlation coefficients were between 0.9161 and 0.9606 indicating that the dosd
is an effective measure for determining the structural quality of given request data
sets. Moreover, an analysis of the dosd values determined for the real-world request
data class S REAL also yielded good results. Therefore, it was concluded that for the
first time the proposed dosd provides a reasonable starting point for analyzing the
structural quality of given request data sets. As mentioned above, this is an essential
factor for estimating the improvements that can be attained by utilizing pro-active
real-time control approaches. Moreover, it provides decision support for efficiently
customizing the proposed pro-active real-time control approach by choosing appro-
priate DCminλ values for generating stochastic knowledge depending on the avail-
able request data set, customer inconvenience function, and fleet size.
In a further computational study, we continued to investigate the impacts of ve-
hicle en-route diversion activities on the solution quality and the resulting driver
inconvenience:
Question 3: What impact does vehicle en-route diversion have on the solution qual-
ity? Since this increases driver inconvenience, is there a conflict between customer
266 8 Computational Results
inconvenience and driver inconvenience and does a useful trade-off between both
objectives exist?
In this chapter, the evaluated RDOPG applications and the achieved results of this
book are presented. First, a summary about the work in this book, attained results,
and contributions is given. Finally, an outlook on future work that provides avenues
for future research is given.
9.1 Summary
such as the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP),
and Pickup and Delivery Problem (PDP) were introduced. Furthermore, since the
considered RDOPG applications can be represented as variants of the VRP, in the
remainder of Chap. 2, characteristics and variants of VRPs were discussed. These
characteristics include solution complexity issues and possible solution methods. In
the main part of this chapter, different variants of the VRP were described. Specif-
ically, variants of the static VRP that differ from each other in terms of problem
attributes such as transportation requests, number of depots, available vehicles, as
well as different pursued objective functions were discussed. As mentioned above,
RDOPG applications belong to the class of dynamic routing problems due to newly
arriving requests during the execution of the transportation process. Therefore, after
describing static routing problems in which the relevant information is constant, dy-
namic routing problems in which the relevant information changes were presented.
For this purpose, different classifications in the literature that deal with differences
between static and dynamic routing problems were described. Since dynamic prob-
lems can be distinguished according to the type of relevant information revelation,
appropriate existing classifications were also presented. In order to aggregate the
results that are relevant for the considered RDOPG applications from these classifi-
cations, a unified approach for classifying routing problems was developed. In this
unified approach, the type of changes that occur during the execution of the trans-
portation process in the relevant information as well as their availability and process-
ing and the type of available stochastic knowledge are considered. According to this
classification, different possible variants of VRPs which are known in the literature
were introduced. Afterwards, in accordance with the considered RDOPG applica-
tions, Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems (DVRPs) in which a centralized coordi-
nation of the tour plan utilizing real-time control approaches is applied were con-
sidered next. Specifically, characteristics of such routing problems were presented.
Besides typical objectives pursued in dynamic routing problems and a description
of dynamic events considered in dynamic routing problems, a measure proposed by
Lund et al. (1996) and Larsen (2000) for determining the difficulty level of solving
individual problem instances in real-time routing problems was introduced. Based
on this measure denoted as the degree of dynamism, a three-echelon classification
proposed by Larsen (2000) was introduced and various real-world dynamic routing
applications were described according to their degree of dynamism. In order to eval-
uate the performance of dynamic routing approaches, two different measures known
in the literature were presented. Finally, a general classification scheme for charac-
terizing the routing problems was described. This scheme was adopted from the
literature and extended in order to cover additional relevant problem characteristics
which are important for RDOPG applications.
In Chap. 3 the considered problem represented by the RDOPG applications was
described in detail. One of the main characteristics that distinguishes RDOPG ap-
plications from many other dynamic routing applications is the objective function
that consists either of a linear or a quadratic customer inconvenience function. This
customer inconvenience is different from penalty costs which only occur when a
270 9 Summary and Outlook on Future Work
request is serviced late since customer inconvenience directly starts with the re-
quest arrival in the system. If a maximum allowed request response time is not re-
garded, high lateness penalty costs occur. Furthermore, vehicle en-route diversion is
allowed. Specifically, allowing to re-route a vehicle while it is traveling to a request
is likely to result in an improved solution quality since this enables quick service
of a newly incoming request which is closely located to the vehicle. Moreover, past
request information is available and can be used to generate stochastic knowledge
about expected future requests which is important in order to apply the pro-active
real-time control approach. After this problem description, various other character-
istics of the RDOPG applications, such as its problem complexity, were described
and the RDOPG applications were classified according to the general classification
scheme which was presented in Chap. 2.
Based on this problem description, an extensive literature review was conducted
in Chap. 4 considering various known approaches for dynamic routing problems
which cover important aspects of RDOPG applications. After describing the first
approaches for dynamic routing problems that have been published in the litera-
ture, selected research work dealing with dynamic routing problems was presented.
Furthermore, general techniques for providing an increased flexibility in dynamic
routing problems were introduced. These techniques were subdivided according to
whether they require stochastic knowledge or not. This distinction was later on used
when presenting the approaches in the literature that provide an increased flexibil-
ity. In the literature review, different approaches including strategic approaches and
reoptimization-based approaches were considered. From this literature review it can
be observed, as mentioned above, that the majority of the approaches presented in
the literature which utilize stochastic knowledge assume that it is directly avail-
able by prescribed probability distributions. In addition to methods for increasing
flexibility in real-time control approaches, the literature review also presents ap-
proaches in the literature which cover other aspects that play an important role in
the considered RDOPG applications. These aspects include objective functions that
are comparable to the one utilized. Also described were real-time control concepts,
road networks for mapping vehicle movements and travel time as well as travel dis-
tance calculations, and appropriate technical equipment for implementing real-time
control approaches.
After this literature review, the real-time control concept utilized in the RDOPG
applications was introduced in Chap. 5. First, a general categorization of differ-
ent control concepts that are often applied in logistic and production systems was
presented. After this categorization, a general challenge of real-time control ap-
proaches, i.e., the concurrency between tour plan execution and tour plan adap-
tation, was described. This is important for many real-time applications since the
controlled process is often executed simultaneous to its adaptation. Since trans-
portation processes of RDOPG applications also belong to these types of real-time
control processes, the anticipation horizon concept (cf. Bock 2010) which is used
for dealing with this challenge was described. Moreover, the update handling used
for integrating dynamically arriving requests and generating individual problem in-
stances as well as the idle vehicle waiting strategy were introduced. By making use
9.1 Summary 271
of this strategy, idle vehicles wait for further arriving requests at their last serviced
request location instead of directly traveling back to the depot. In this context, the
applied vehicle scheduling strategy was presented. Using this strategy, vehicles di-
rectly drive to their next assigned request location since pending requests can always
be directly serviced when they arrive in the system. Furthermore, the mathematical
model used to represent individual problem instances was presented including all
constraints that need to be fulfilled for the considered RDOPG applications. More-
over, both considered objective functions denoted as linear2X and quadratic were
defined. Finally, the introduced RDOPG real-time control concept was categorized
according to the classification at the beginning of the chapter.
The previously described real-time control approach is deterministic since it only
considers requests that have recently arrived during tour plan adaptation but does not
utilize stochastic knowledge about requests expected in the future. In order to utilize
the available stochastic knowledge, new methods were presented in Chap. 6 for ex-
tending the deterministic real-time control approach to the new proposed pro-active
real-time control approach. This pro-active real-time control approach integrates
the generated stochastic knowledge into the tour plan coordination process by using
dummy customers. In contrast to real requests, dummy customers are not serviced
but are used to guide vehicles into request-likely areas where future requests are
expected with a high probability according to the stochastic knowledge. For this
purpose, new methods for generating stochastic knowledge from real past request
information were described. This generation is performed by partitioning the con-
sidered service area into subareas and segments. For each of these segments, request
arrivals are modeled by a time-space Poisson process whose rate parameter is cal-
culated by analyzing the number of request arrivals in the respective segment on a
specific number of considered past working days. Afterwards, dummy customers
are created by aggregating segments to clusters that fulfill certain quality criteria.
Among others, one criterion to be fulfilled consists of requiring that one or more
requests actually arrives in place of a dummy customer at least with a specified
probability. Moreover, as mentioned above, in the utilized methods for generating
stochastic knowledge it is assumed that requests in the individual segments arrive
according to time-space Poisson processes. In order to check this assumption, for
each dummy customer the likelihood that past request arrivals observed in the cor-
responding cluster are generated by a time-space Poisson processes is evaluated.
If this is too unlikely, the dummy customer is discarded. In order to generate as
many valid dummy customers as possible, an exact two-step solution method was
presented. In the first step, all valid dummy customers are generated while in the sec-
ond step the maximum number of non-overlapping dummy customers is selected by
utilizing an MIP solver. Moreover, modifications of the real-time control approach
required for integrating and handling dummy customers during the execution of the
transportation process were presented. This also included the description of an ex-
tended vehicle scheduling strategy. Using this strategy, a vehicle waits at its current
position if its next assigned request is a dummy customer and if its departure at the
current time in the transportation process would otherwise make the vehicle arrive
earlier than desired at the dummy customer’s location.
272 9 Summary and Outlook on Future Work
In order to efficiently solve the individual static problems generated by the real-
time control approach under the tight computational time restrictions imposed by
the real-time nature of the considered RDOPG applications, a sophisticated heuris-
tic solution method was proposed in Chap. 7. This solution method is based on a
Tabu Search metaheuristic that utilizes different neighborhood operators which are
chosen by a deterministic stage-based selection scheme. After explaining the gen-
eral procedure of the Tabu Search metaheuristic and describing differences between
intensifying and diversifying neighborhood operators, the utilized neighborhood op-
erators were described in detail. After this description, the applied tabu-active at-
tribute in the tabu list that is used to identify tabu-active solutions was explained.
Specifically, in order to allow an almost unique identification of individual solutions,
a fingerprint consisting of two quickly computable checksums was used as the tabu-
active attribute. This also allows the identification of solutions across consecutive
problem instances. After a description of the initial tour plan generation process,
the stage-based selection scheme was presented. This scheme selects the neighbor-
hood operator which is to be applied in each iteration of the solution process. After
a predefined number of iterations without finding a new best global solution, the
current stage is switched to the next higher one. Therefore, neighborhood operators
providing a higher level of diversification are applied in the subsequent iterations.
When a new best global solution is found, the stage is reset to the first one so that
an intensifying neighborhood operator is applied in the next iterations.
In Chap. 8, the extensive computational experiments that are performed to eval-
uate the proposed variants of the real-time control approach and to answer the cen-
tral research questions of this book were presented. This includes a description of
the discrete event-based simulator and the tested environment consisting of the uti-
lized road network as well as certain parameters, i.e., the length of the anticipating
horizon, tested fleet sizes, applied Tabu Search parameters, and evaluated dummy
customer parameters for generating and integrating stochastic knowledge into the
pro-active real-time control approach. Furthermore, the two request data classes on
which the evaluations are conducted were introduced. The first request data class
consists of a real request data set derived from a real-world application dealing with
the subsequent delivery of newspapers. The second request data class consists of
different generated request data sets that possess specific designed structural quality
aspects. Therefore, the second request data class allows a differentiated analysis of
the attainable improvements of the proposed pro-active real-time control approach
under different levels of structural diversity present in the designed request data sets
of this request data class.
Before the main computational study, several preliminary studies were per-
formed. First, the performance of the Tabu Search solution method was evaluated by
comparing its attained results with the ones obtained by a lower bound of an exact
solution approach for a related dynamic vehicle routing problem. In this study, it
was shown that the proposed Tabu Search metaheuristic yields near-optimal results
within 10 seconds for individual problem instances that arise during the transporta-
tion process of the considered RDOPG applications. Hence, we concluded that the
9.1 Summary 273
proposed Tabu Search metaheuristic allows a sufficiently fast and efficient adap-
tation of the individual problem instances. In a second preliminary study, the per-
formance of the deterministic real-time control approach was evaluated against two
related deterministic real-time control approaches. The results revealed that the vari-
ant denoted as TIMELIMIT10, which invokes the solution method for 10 seconds
whenever new requests have arrived in the previous anticipation horizon, achieves a
performance that is comparable to the original approach which continuously applies
the solution method for the complete length of the anticipation horizon. An analysis
showed that this can be explained by the fact that TIMELIMIT10 already achieves
a near-optimal solution quality within the given time limit so that no significant fur-
ther improvements can be attained by applying the proposed solution method for a
longer time period. Hence, TIMELIMIT10 was used as the reference setting which
is challenging due to the utilization of the described solution method. The next pre-
liminary study dealt with the impacts of allowing vehicle en-route diversion on the
attained solution quality in the deterministic real-time control approach. The results
showed that, depending on the fleet size and utilized customer inconvenience func-
tion, improvements in the solution quality between 14 % and 25 % can be attained
compared to the solution quality when vehicle en-route diversion activities are pro-
hibited while reducing travel time and travel distance at the same time. In a further
study, the performance of the Poisson quality approach in our forecasting methods,
which uses a Goodness-of-Fit test to determine the structural distortion of request
data sets, was evaluated. This test was used to check the assumption that request
arrivals can be modeled by a set of unknown time-space Poisson processes whose
rate parameters are also unknown but remain constant from day to day. Hence, a low
structural distortion of the existing request data set is important in order to allow for
an efficient application of the proposed pro-active real-time control approach. Evalu-
ations conducted on different request data sets that have different levels of structural
distortion showed that the proposed Poisson quality approach is an efficient method
for determining the structural distortion of request data sets. The evaluations also
indicated that S REAL has, similar to S GEN , a low structural distortion. Moreover, a
suitable value for the minimum demanded Poisson quality parameter for generating
stochastic knowledge was derived. Using this parameter value, information on the
stochastic knowledge generated for the request data sets evaluated our main compu-
tational experiments was given. This also included information about the process of
generating this stochastic knowledge.
In the main computational experiments, first the results of the generated stochas-
tic knowledge by utilizing the proposed forecasting method were presented. There-
after, a solution quality comparison of the pro-active real-time control approach and
its deterministic variant was presented. In these experiments, the achieved results
of evaluating the real-world request data class S REAL were provided. The results
revealed that depending on the used customer inconvenience function as well as
on the fleet size, different dummy customer settings with regard to the minimum
demanded quality DCminλ yielded the best results. Specifically, when few vehicles
are present, the utilization of stochastic knowledge should be reconsidered in gen-
eral. This is especially important if the linear2X customer inconvenience is applied
274 9 Summary and Outlook on Future Work
since in this case, the deterministic real-time control approach tends to postpone
the service of requests in order to service other requests earlier. This often causes
problems when further unexpected requests arrive so that some requests cannot be
serviced within the maximum allowed response time. This situation is even wors-
ened when uncertain stochastic knowledge is used in the pro-active real-time con-
trol approach. Therefore, the utilization of stochastic knowledge only comprising
dummy customers, for which at least one request will actually arrive in place of the
dummy customer with a high probability, is recommendable in this situation. When
more vehicles are present, the utilization of generated stochastic knowledge can at-
tain significant improvements. Moreover, the use of forecasted stochastic knowledge
that also comprises less reliable information can lead to additional improvements of
the solution quality. This can be explained by the fact that due to the larger fleet
size, available vehicles are less utilized so that uncertain information can be ben-
eficially used without disturbing the service of pending requests. With the largest
tested fleet size, improvements of up to 1.7 % in the linear customer inconvenience
case and 7.93 % in the quadratic customer inconvenience case could be attained.
Furthermore, a detailed visual analysis of S REAL revealed that the relative re-
quest arrival rates in all subareas of the service area do not significantly vary during
the day. Therefore, since newly arriving requests keep occurring at similar locations
as before, the deterministic real-time control approach already advantageously po-
sitions the vehicles in advance for servicing future requests by making use of the
presented idle vehicle waiting strategy. Therefore, this results in a low structural di-
versity for S REAL so that additional improvements attainable by utilizing stochastic
knowledge in the pro-active real-time control approach are limited in this request
data set. A further potentially problematic issue given by the fact that it may not be
possible to reasonably represent request arrivals in S REAL by unknown time-space
Poisson processes, which are constant from day to day, could not be identified as a
significant problem. Note that this is in line with the previously attained results of
analyzing the structural distortion of S REAL that indicated a low structural distortion
for this request data set. Hence, the low structural diversity of S REAL seems to be
the major reason for the prohibition of further improvements attainable on S REAL
by using the pro-active real-time control approach.
The second evaluated request data class S GEN was generated using time-space
Poisson processes with individual request arrival rates in different subregions. In
this data, these arrival probabilities as well as the total request arrival rate signif-
icantly change during the day. Note that higher arrival rate variations reduce the
probability that vehicles are closely located to future request arrivals by just waiting
at the location of the last serviced request. Therefore, in this case, an a priori reposi-
tioning of vehicles according to expected future request arrivals based on stochastic
knowledge increasingly becomes advantageous. The mentioned variation in request
arrival rates was defined according to two dimensions that are called RegionDiver-
sity (RD) and TimeDiversity (TD). Utilizing these two dimensions, the structural
diversity of this request data class was defined. Overall, 25 request data sets with
different levels of structural diversity were generated. The computational results
showed that in request data sets with higher levels of structural diversity, signifi-
cantly higher solution quality improvements can be attained by using the pro-active
9.1 Summary 275
imposes a high inconvenience on the drivers which may result in reduced work mo-
tivation. In order to reduce driver inconvenience by lowering the number of vehicle
en-route diversion activities, a threshold-based approach for limiting these vehicle
en-route diversion activities was proposed. By using this approach, vehicle en-route
diversion activities are limited to the ones which achieve objective function value
improvements which are higher than the penalty incurred by the threshold parameter
value. In computational experiments performed by using the deterministic real-time
control approach, the impact of different values of the proposed threshold parame-
ter on the solution quality was analyzed. It was shown that the application of small
threshold parameter values significantly reduces the number of vehicle en-route di-
version activities while only marginally increasing the resulting customer inconve-
nience. When using higher threshold parameter values, a further decrease of per-
formed vehicle en-route diversion activities could be observed but with a significant
increase in the attained customer inconvenience. Furthermore, the highest investi-
gated threshold parameter value effectively prohibited all vehicle en-route diversion
activities which resulted in the lowest achievable driver inconvenience with regard
to the number of performed vehicle en-route diversion activities.
Moreover, the utilization of the proposed pro-active real-time control approach
was also recommended when considering driver inconvenience aspects. Specifically,
the computational results showed that the pro-active real-time control approach is
able to reduce customer inconvenience and driver inconvenience at the same time
when appropriate threshold parameter values are used. It was concluded that the
proposed threshold-based approach is an effective method in limiting the number
of vehicle en-route diversion activities to a desired level. For the different pursued
aims, i.e., prioritizing customer inconvenience or driver inconvenience or consider-
ing a balance of both contradicting aims, adequate values for the threshold parameter
approach were provided.
The work presented in this book extends the literature of stochastic and dynamic
vehicle routing problems by a new pro-active real-time control approach and an
approach for generating stochastic knowledge out of past request information. All
approaches have been extensively tested under different conditions. Furthermore,
several evaluations which consider the impacts of the structural request data quality
on the solution quality as well as a method for limiting vehicle en-route diversion
activities have been proposed and impacts on the solution quality have been as-
sessed. The achieved results are likely also to provide additional insights into other
variants of dynamic routing problems which are related to the considered RDOPG
applications.
The attained results provide promising starting points for avenues of further research
which are presented in what follows. First, extensions of the proposed methods for
generating stochastic knowledge seem to be useful. For instance, the integration of
9.2 Outlook on Future Work 277
geographical information that is available in the road network could have a signif-
icant impact on the performance of the pro-active approach. Specifically, the per-
formed generation of compact clusters on predefined segments might restrict the
generation of stochastic knowledge and its applicability if natural barriers such as
rivers or channels exist. Therefore, an extension of the segment-based clustering
methods used for generating stochastic knowledge should be examined. Another ex-
tension may improve the performance of the pro-active real-time control approach
if the existing request data does not consist of request arrival characteristics which
are constant from day to day but instead consists of different recurring types of days
in which request arrivals significantly vary and the type of the upcoming day cannot
be determined in advance. For example, this is the case when the requests arrive
on different days according to individual sets of time-space Poisson processes. In
such cases, further improvements are likely to be attained by integrating sophisti-
cated pattern generation and recognition methods into the cluster generation and
the pro-active real-time control approach. Specifically, as an extension to the pro-
posed forecasting approach which assumes one pattern that is constant from day to
day, different day patterns can be learned based on past request information. During
the execution of the transportation process, an appropriate day pattern is identi-
fied according to requests that have already arrived during the current day. After
this identification, adequate stochastic knowledge is dynamically integrated into the
pro-active real-time control approach during the execution of the transportation pro-
cess. As mentioned in Sect. 8.6, an extension of the proposed forecasting methods
requires further developing methods for the purpose of identifying structural distor-
tion. Furthermore, using methods for an ex-post comparison of predicted requests
and those that have occurred during the transportation process can be useful in fine-
tuning the stochastic knowledge.
Moreover, as mentioned in the literature review, other pro-active approaches ex-
ist in the literature for utilizing stochastic knowledge. For example, sampling-based
approaches and approximate dynamic programming approaches have also been suc-
cessfully applied to dynamic routing problems. In this context, ideas inspired from
these types of approaches for generating and utilizing stochastic knowledge can be
integrated into the proposed pro-active real-time control approach. In doing so, an
additional increase in solution quality improvements is likely to be attained. Fur-
thermore, as can be seen in the computational experiments, the impact of different
parameters used in the generation of the stochastic knowledge, for example the im-
pacts of a minimum demanded rate parameter of each cluster on the solution quality
have been evaluated in detail. In addition, there exist other parameters whose impact
on the solution quality could be analyzed in order to improve the methods used for
generating stochastic knowledge. For example, a more detailed analysis of chosen
parameter values such as the minimum demanded Poisson quality or the number of
working days nf used could be investigated. Moreover, the development of methods
which are suitable for assessing whether practical request data sets fulfill require-
ment (c) of Poisson processes (see Sect. 6.2.1) could be researched.
Furthermore, the integration of other sources of dynamism into the pro-active
real-time control approach can increase its practicability. For example, this includes
278 9 Summary and Outlook on Future Work
instead of choosing a tour plan directly, the real-time control approach could pro-
vide several alternative tour plans to the dispatcher who selects a desired tour plan
and may also apply further modifications to it. Another possibility of increasing
the interactivity can be realized by integrating additional actions into the on-board
units of the vehicles so that service workers are able to inform the central dispatch-
ing center about the progress of request activities. For instance, a service worker
can inform the dispatching center when the current customer request requires more
time for service than planned. Furthermore, a new estimated completion time of the
current service activity could be provided.
Moreover, the validation of attainable solution quality improvements by applying
the proposed pro-active real-time control in real-world applications is another field
of research which might be very interesting for theory and practice.
Appendix A
Additional Facts Related to Chap. 1
90%
Market share (% ton-kilometers)
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
Domestic trucks
20%
Foreign trucks
10%
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Year
Fig. A.1 Market share of domestic and foreign trucks in Germany for domestic and cross-border
transportation from 1991 to 2010 (cf. BGL e.V. 2011)
Note: Air and Sea: only domestic and intra-EU-27 transport; provisional estimates. Road: national
and international haulage by vehicles registered in the EU-27
Table A.2 Newspaper advertising expenditures in the United States of America from 1950 to 2010
(cf. Newspaper Association of America 2011)
Year Newspaper print total Newspaper online total Combined newspaper
print and online total
$Millions %Change $Millions %Change $Millions %Change
j Request arrival probabilities p (ai , tj ) per time slice in each segment ai , i ∈ {1, . . . , 18} λ (tj )
RD = TD = 1.00
1 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.16 0.20 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.20 0.01 0.30 0.01 0.01 0.013 15.00
2 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.30 0.40 0.10 0.01 0.01 0.06 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 40.00
3 0.01 0.01 0.26 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.20 0.10 0.30 0.01 30.00
4 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.20 0.30 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.35 0.01 0.01 0.01 35.00
5 0.01 0.01 0.10 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.20 0.01 0.01 0.07 0.01 0.01 0.30 0.01 0.20 0.01 0.01 0.01 10.00
RD = TD = 0.75
1 0.0214 0.0214 0.0341 0.1114 0.1425 0.0323 0.0285 0.0323 0.0360 0.0270 0.0214 0.0214 0.1481 0.0214 0.2224 0.0248 0.0323 0.0214 20.8088
2 0.0214 0.0214 0.0341 0.0270 0.0356 0.0323 0.0285 0.1954 0.2554 0.0776 0.0214 0.0214 0.0694 0.0214 0.0593 0.0248 0.0323 0.0214 37.6471
3 0.0214 0.0214 0.1748 0.0270 0.0356 0.0323 0.0285 0.0323 0.0360 0.0270 0.0214 0.0214 0.0413 0.0214 0.1661 0.0754 0.1954 0.0214 26.3235
4 0.0214 0.0214 0.0341 0.0270 0.1425 0.1954 0.0285 0.0323 0.0360 0.0270 0.0214 0.0214 0.0413 0.0214 0.2505 0.0248 0.0323 0.0214 33.8971
5 0.0214 0.0214 0.0848 0.0270 0.0356 0.0323 0.1354 0.0323 0.0360 0.0608 0.0214 0.0214 0.2044 0.0214 0.1661 0.0248 0.0323 0.0214 11.3235
RD = TD = 0.50
1 0.0328 0.0328 0.0498 0.0778 0.0993 0.0473 0.0423 0.0473 0.0523 0.0403 0.0328 0.0328 0.1068 0.0328 0.1558 0.0373 0.0473 0.0328 26.6176
2 0.0328 0.0328 0.0498 0.0403 0.0518 0.0473 0.0423 0.1198 0.1498 0.0628 0.0328 0.0328 0.0718 0.0328 0.0833 0.0373 0.0473 0.0328 35.2941
3 0.0328 0.0328 0.1123 0.0403 0.0518 0.0473 0.0423 0.0473 0.0523 0.0403 0.0328 0.0328 0.0593 0.0328 0.1308 0.0598 0.1198 0.0328 22.6471
4 0.0328 0.0328 0.0498 0.0403 0.0993 0.1198 0.0423 0.0473 0.0523 0.0403 0.0328 0.0328 0.0593 0.0328 0.1683 0.0373 0.0473 0.0328 32.7941
5 0.0328 0.0328 0.0723 0.0403 0.0518 0.0473 0.0898 0.0473 0.0523 0.0553 0.0328 0.0328 0.1318 0.0328 0.1308 0.0373 0.0473 0.0328 12.6471
RD = TD = 0.25
1 0.0442 0.0442 0.0569 0.0592 0.0703 0.0550 0.0513 0.0550 0.0588 0.0498 0.0442 0.0442 0.0759 0.0442 0.1002 0.0475 0.0550 0.0442 32.4265
2 0.0442 0.0442 0.0569 0.0498 0.0584 0.0550 0.0513 0.0732 0.0832 0.0554 0.0442 0.0442 0.0672 0.0442 0.0820 0.0475 0.0550 0.0442 32.9412
3 0.0442 0.0442 0.0725 0.0498 0.0584 0.0550 0.0513 0.0550 0.0588 0.0498 0.0442 0.0442 0.0640 0.0442 0.0939 0.0532 0.0732 0.0442 18.9706
B Additional Information on Request Data Sets of Request Data Class S GEN
Table B.1 (Continued)
j Request arrival probabilities p (ai , tj ) per time slice in each segment ai , i ∈ {1, . . . , 18} λ (tj )
4 0.0442 0.0442 0.0569 0.0498 0.0703 0.0732 0.0513 0.0550 0.0588 0.0498 0.0442 0.0442 0.0640 0.0442 0.1033 0.0475 0.0550 0.0442 31.6912
5 0.0442 0.0442 0.0625 0.0498 0.0584 0.0550 0.0632 0.0550 0.0588 0.0535 0.0442 0.0442 0.0822 0.0442 0.0939 0.0475 0.0550 0.0442 13.9706
RD = TD = 0.00
1 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 38.2353
2 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 30.5882
3 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 15.2941
4 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 30.5882
5 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 15.2941
RD = 1.00, TD = 0.00
1 0.01 0.01 0.078 0.04 0.086 0.068 0.048 0.068 0.088 0.04 0.01 0.01 0.116 0.01 0.212 0.028 0.068 0.01 38.2353
2 0.01 0.01 0.078 0.04 0.086 0.068 0.048 0.068 0.088 0.04 0.01 0.01 0.116 0.01 0.212 0.028 0.068 0.01 30.5882
3 0.01 0.01 0.078 0.04 0.086 0.068 0.048 0.068 0.088 0.04 0.01 0.01 0.116 0.01 0.212 0.028 0.068 0.01 15.2941
4 0.01 0.01 0.078 0.04 0.086 0.068 0.048 0.068 0.088 0.04 0.01 0.01 0.116 0.01 0.212 0.028 0.068 0.01 30.5882
5 0.01 0.01 0.078 0.04 0.086 0.068 0.048 0.068 0.088 0.04 0.01 0.01 0.116 0.01 0.212 0.028 0.068 0.01 15.2941
B.1 Parameters for Generating Selected Request Data Sets of S GEN
RD = 0.00, TD = 1.00
1 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 15.00
2 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 40.00
3 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 30.00
4 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 35.00
5 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 0.0556 10.00
e e e e e
m m m m m
Ti Ti Ti Ti Ti
x x x x x
RD = 0.00, TD = 0.00 RD = 0.00, TD = 0.25 RD = 0.00, TD = 0.50 RD = 0.00, TD = 0.75 RD = 0.00, TD = 1.00
y y y y y
e e e e e
m m m m m
Ti Ti Ti Ti Ti
x x x x x
RD = 0.25, TD = 0.00 RD = 0.25, TD = 0.25 RD = 0.25, TD = 0.50 RD = 0.25, TD = 0.75 RD = 0.25, TD = 1.00
y y y y y
e e e e e
m m m m m
Ti Ti Ti Ti Ti
x x x x x
RD = 0.50, TD = 0.00 RD = 0.50, TD = 0.25 RD = 0.50, TD = 0.50 RD = 0.50, TD = 0.75 RD = 0.50, TD = 1.00
y y y y y
e e e e e
m m m m m
Ti Ti Ti Ti Ti
x x x x x
RD = 0.75, TD = 0.00 RD = 0.75, TD = 0.25 RD = 0.75, TD = 0.50 RD = 0.75, TD = 0.75 RD = 0.75, TD = 1.00
y y y y y
e e e e e
m m m m m
Ti Ti Ti Ti Ti
x x x x x
RD = 1.00, TD = 0.00 RD = 1.00, TD = 0.25 RD = 1.00, TD = 0.50 RD = 1.00, TD = 0.75 RD = 1.00, TD = 1.00
Fig. B.1 All request data sets of S GEN with different levels of structural diversity
Appendix C
Request Response Times of the Examined
Request Data Classes
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.1 Request response times on S REAL using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and
2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.2 Request response times on S REAL using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and
2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.3 Request response times on S REAL using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and
2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.4 Request response times on S REAL using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and
2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.5 Request response times on S REAL using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and
2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.6 Request response times on S REAL using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, and
2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience grouped by intervals of 50 seconds
C.2 Request Response Times of S GEN 291
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
serviced requests
Fig. C.7 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.00 and TD = 0.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
serviced requests
Fig. C.8 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DC = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
min λ
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.00 and TD = 0.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.9 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.25 and TD = 0.25 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
292 C Request Response Times of the Examined Request Data Classes
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.10 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.25 and TD = 0.25 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.11 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.50 and TD = 0.50 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.12 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.50 and TD = 0.50 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
C.2 Request Response Times of S GEN 293
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.13 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.75 and TD = 0.75 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.14 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.75 and TD = 0.75 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.15 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 1.00 and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
294 C Request Response Times of the Examined Request Data Classes
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.16 Request response times on S GEN using 8 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 1.00 and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
serviced requests
Fig. C.17 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.00 and TD = 0.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
serviced requests
Fig. C.18 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.00 and TD = 0.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
C.2 Request Response Times of S GEN 295
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.19 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.25 and TD = 0.25 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.20 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.25 and TD = 0.25 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.21 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.50 and TD = 0.50 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
296 C Request Response Times of the Examined Request Data Classes
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.22 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.50 and TD = 0.50 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.23 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.75 and TD = 0.75 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.24 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.75 and TD = 0.75 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
C.2 Request Response Times of S GEN 297
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.25 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 1.00 and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.26 Request response times on S GEN using 10 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 1.00 and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
serviced requests
Fig. C.27 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.00 and TD = 0.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
298 C Request Response Times of the Examined Request Data Classes
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
serviced requests
Fig. C.28 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.00 and TD = 0.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.29 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.25 and TD = 0.25 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.30 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.25 and TD = 0.25 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
C.2 Request Response Times of S GEN 299
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.31 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.50 and TD = 0.50 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.32 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.50 and TD = 0.50 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.33 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 0.75 and TD = 0.75 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
300 C Request Response Times of the Examined Request Data Classes
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.34 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 0.75 and TD = 0.75 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.35 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, linear2X customer inconvenience, RD = 1.00 and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
TIMELIMIT10
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.0
PROACTIVE10, DC minλ = 1.2
serviced requests
Fig. C.36 Request response times on S GEN using 12 vehicles and DCmin λ = 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8,
and 2.0, quadratic customer inconvenience, RD = 1.00 and TD = 1.00 grouped by intervals of
50 seconds
About the Author
Cubillos, C., Crawford, B., & Rodríguez, N. (2007). Distributed planning for the on-line dial-a-
ride problem. In F. Preparata & Q. Fang (Eds.), Lecture notes in computer science: Vol. 4613.
Frontiers in algorithmics (pp. 124–135). Berlin: Springer.
Daimler Group (2011). Annual Report 2010. http://www.daimler.com/Projects/c2c/channel/
documents/1985489_Daimler_Annual_Report_2010.pdf. Accessed on 2011-05-12.
Dakin, R. J. (1965). A tree-search algorithm for mixed integer programming problems. Computer
Journal, 8(3), 250–255.
Dantzig, G., Fulkerson, R., & Johnson, S. (1954). Solution of a large-scale Traveling-Salesman
Problem. Journal of the Operations Research Society of America, 2(4), 393–410.
Dantzig, G. B., & Ramser, J. H. (1959). The truck dispatching problem. Management Science,
6(1), 80–91.
Davis, M. M., & Maggard, M. J. (1990). An analysis of customer satisfaction with waiting times
in a two-stage service process. Journal of Operations Management, 9(3), 324–334.
de Oliveira, H. C. B., Rocha, G. M., de Souza, M. M., Ciscon, L. A., Borges, V. R., & Mateus, G. R.
(2008). A vehicular waiting time heuristic for dynamic vehicle routing problem. In Proceedings
of the 2008 ACM symposium on applied computing (SAC ’08) (pp. 13–17). New York: ACM.
de Paepe, W. E. (2002). Complexity results and competitive analysis for vehicle routing problems.
PhD Thesis, Eindhoven: Technische University of Eindhoven.
Desaulniers, G., Desrosiers, J., & Solomon, M. M. (2005). GERAD 25th anniversary series. Col-
umn generation. Boston: Springer. ISBN 0387254854.
Desrochers, M., & Laporte, G. (1991). Improvements and extensions to the Miller-Tucker-Zemlin
subtour elimination constraints. Operations Research Letters, 10(1), 27–36.
Desrochers, M., Lenstra, J. K., Savelsbergh, M. W. P., & Soumis, F. (1988). Vehicle routing with
time windows: optimization and approximation. In Vehicle routing: Methods and studies (pp.
65–84). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Desrosiers, J., Dumas, Y., Solomon, M. M., & Soumis, F. (1995). Time constrained routing and
scheduling. In M. O. Ball, T. L. Magnanti, C. L. Monma & G. L. Nemhauser (Eds.), Hand-
books in operations research and management science: Vol. 8. Network routing (pp. 35–139).
Amsterdam: North-Holland. ISBN 978-0444821416.
Deutsch, P., & Gailly, J. L. (1996). RFC1950: ZLIB compressed data format specification version
3.3. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1950.txt. Accessed on 2009-03-04.
DHL Express Germany GmbH (2010). Export Services. http://www.dhl.de/en/express/
export-services.html. Accessed on 2010-12-06.
Dijkstra, E. W. (1959). A note on two problems in connexion with graphs. Numerische Mathematik,
1(1), 269–271.
Domschke, W., & Drexl, A. (2011). Einführung in operations research (8th ed.). Berlin: Springer.
ISBN 3642181112.
Domschke, W., & Scholl, A. (2010). Oldenbourgs Lehr- und Handbücher der Wirtschafts- und
Sozialwissenschaften: Vol. 2. Rundreisen und Touren (5th revised and extended ed.). München:
Oldenbourg. ISBN 3486590936.
Dror, M. (1989). Vehicle routing with stochastic demands: properties and solution frameworks.
Transportation Science, 23(3), 166–176.
Dror, M. (2005). Vehicle routing with stochastic demands: models & computational methods. In
M. Dror, P. L’Ecuyer & F. Szidarovszky (Eds.), International series in operations research &
management science: Vol. 46. Modeling uncertainty (pp. 625–649). Boston: Springer. ISBN
978-0-306-48102-4.
Dror, M., Laporte, G., & Louveaux, F. V. (1993). Vehicle routing with stochastic demands and
restricted failures. Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, 37(3), 273–283.
Dumas, Y., Soumis, F., & Desrosiers, J. (1990). Technical note—optimizing the schedule for a
fixed vehicle path with convex inconvenience costs. Transportation Science, 24(2), 145–152.
Dumas, Y., Desrosiers, J., Gelinas, E., & Solomon, M. M. (1995). An optimal algorithm for the
Traveling Salesman Problem with time windows. Operations Research, 43(2), 367–371.
References 307
Garey, M. R., & Johnson, D. S. (1979). A series of books in the mathematical sciences. Computers
and intractability: a guide to the theory of NP-completeness (1st ed.). New York: Freeman.
ISBN 0716710455.
Gass, S. I. (2003). Linear programming: methods and applications (5th ed.). New York: Dover.
ISBN 048643284X.
Gendreau, M., & Potvin, J.-Y. (1998). Dynamic vehicle routing and dispatching. In T. G. Crainic
(Ed.), Center for research on transportation 25th anniversary series, 1971–1996. Fleet man-
agement and logistics (pp. 115–126). Heidelberg: Springer. ISBN 0792381610.
Gendreau, M., Laporte, G., & Séguin, R. (1996). Stochastic vehicle routing. European Journal of
Operational Research, 88(1), 3–12.
Gendreau, M., Guertin, F., Potvin, J.-Y., & Séguin, R. (1998). Neighborhood search heuristics for
a dynamic vehicle dispatching problem with pick-ups and deliveries (Technical Report CRT-98-
10). Centre de Recherche sur les Transport (CRT), Universite de Montreal.
Gendreau, M., Guertin, F., Potvin, J.-Y., & Taillard, É. D. (1999a). Parallel tabu search for real-time
vehicle routing and dispatching. Transportation Science, 33(4), 381–390.
Gendreau, M., Laporte, G., Musaraganyi, C., & Taillard, É. D. (1999b). A tabu search heuristic for
the heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem. Computers & Operations Research, 26(12),
1153–1173.
Gendreau, M., Laporte, G., & Semet, F. (2001). A dynamic model and parallel tabu search heuristic
for real-time ambulance relocation. Parallel Computing, 27(12), 1641–1653.
Gendreau, M., Guertin, F., Potvin, J.-Y., & Séguin, R. (2006). Neighborhood search heuristics for
a dynamic vehicle dispatching problem with pick-ups and deliveries. Transportation Research.
Part C, Emerging Technologies, 14(3), 157–174.
Gendreau, M., Potvin, J.-Y., Bräumlaysy, O., Hasle, G., & Løkketangen, A. (2008). Metaheuristics
for the vehicle routing problem and its extensions: a categorized bibliography. In B. L. Golden,
S. Raghavan & E. A. Wasil (Eds.), Operations research/computer science interfaces series:
Vol. 43. The vehicle routing problem: latest advances and new challenges (pp. 143–169). Hei-
delberg: Springer. ISBN 0387777776.
Ghiani, G., Guerriero, F., Laporte, G., & Musmanno, R. (2003). Real-time vehicle routing: solu-
tion concepts, algorithms and parallel computing strategies. European Journal of Operational
Research, 151(1), 1–11.
Ghiani, G., Laporte, G., & Musmanno, R. (2004). Wiley-Interscience series in systems and op-
timization. Introduction to logistics systems planning and control. Chichester: Wiley. ISBN
9780470849170.
Ghiani, G., Manni, E., Quaranta, A., & Triki, C. (2009). Anticipatory algorithms for same-day
courier dispatching. Transportation Research. Part E, Logistics and Transportation Review,
45(1), 96–106.
Ghiani, G., Manni, E., & Thomas, B. W. (2012). A comparison of anticipatory algorithms for the
dynamic and stochastic Traveling Salesman Problem. Transportation Science, 46(3), 374–387.
Giaglis, G. M., Minis, I., Tatarakis, A., & Zeimpekis, V. (2004). Minimizing logistics risk through
real-time vehicle routing and mobile technologies. International Journal of Physical Distribu-
tion & Logistics Management, 34(9), 749–764.
Glover, F. (1989). Tabu search—part I. ORSA Journal on Computing, 1(3), 190–206.
Glover, F., & Laguna, M. (1998). Tabu search (4th ed.). Heidelberg: Springer. ISBN 0792381874.
Godfrey, G. A., & Powell, W. B. (2002). An adaptive dynamic programming algorithm for dynamic
fleet management, I: single period travel times. Transportation Science, 36(1), 21–39.
Golden, B. L., & Stewart Jr., W. (1978). Vehicle routing with probabilistic demands. In Computer
science and statistics: tenth annual symposium on the interface: proceedings of the 10th annual
symposium held at the National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, Maryland (pp. 252–259).
Golden, B. L., Raghavan, S., & Wasil, E. A. (Eds.) (2008). Operations research/computer science
interfaces series: Vol. 43. The vehicle routing problem: latest advances and new challenges.
Heidelberg: Springer. ISBN 0387777776.
Hadjiconstantinou, E., & Roberts, D. (2002). Routing under uncertainty: an application in the
scheduling of field service engineers. In P. Toth & D. Vigo (Eds.), SIAM monographs on dis-
References 309
crete mathematics and applications. The vehicle routing problem (pp. 331–352). Philadelphia:
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. ISBN 0898714982.
Haghani, A., & Yang, S. (2007). Real-time emergency response fleet deployment: concepts, sys-
tems, simulation & case studies. In V. Zeimpekis, G. M. Giaglis, I. Minis & C. D. Tarantilis
(Eds.), Operations research/computer science interfaces series: Vol. 38. Dynamic fleet manage-
ment (pp. 133–162). Boston: Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-71722-7.
Haklay, M., & Weber, P. (2008). OpenStreetMap: user-generated street maps. IEEE Pervasive
Computing, 7(4), 12–18.
Halonen, T. (2003). GSM, GPRS, and edge performance: evolution towards 3G/UMTS (2nd ed.).
Chichester: Wiley. ISBN 0470866942.
Hansen, P., & Mladenovic, N. (2001). Variable neighborhood search: principles and applications.
European Journal of Operational Research, 130(3), 449–467.
Held, M., & Karp, R. M. (1970). The Traveling-Salesman Problem and minimum spanning trees.
Operations Research, 18(6), 1138–1162.
Held, M., & Karp, R. M. (1971). The Traveling-Salesman Problem and minimum spanning trees:
Part II. Mathematical Programming, 1(1), 6–25.
Hillier, F. S., & Lieberman, G. J. (2008). Introduction to operations research (8th ed.). New York:
McGraw-Hill. ISBN 007123828X.
Homberger, J., & Gehring, H. (2005). A two-phase hybrid metaheuristic for the vehicle routing
problem with time windows. European Journal of Operational Research, 162(1), 220–238.
Hoos, H. H., & Stützle, T. (2005). Stochastic local search: foundations and applications. San
Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN 1558608729.
Horn, M. E. T. (2002a). Fleet scheduling and dispatching for demand-responsive passenger ser-
vices. Transportation Research. Part C, Emerging Technologies, 10(1), 35–63.
Horn, M. E. T. (2002b). Multi-modal and demand-responsive passenger transport systems: a mod-
elling framework with embedded control systems. Transportation Research. Part A, Policy and
Practice, 36(2), 167–188.
Hülsmann, M., Kopfer, H., Cordes, P., & Bloos, M. (2009). Collaborative transportation plan-
ning in complex adaptive logistics systems: a complexity science-based analysis of decision-
making problems of “groupage systems”. In J. Zhou (Ed.), Lecture notes of the institute for
computer sciences, social informatics and telecommunications engineering: Vol. 4. Complex
sciences (pp. 1160–1166). Berlin: Springer. ISBN 978-3-642-02466-5.
Hvattum, L. M., Løkketangen, A., & Laporte, G. (2006). Solving a dynamic and stochastic vehicle
routing problem with a sample scenario hedging heuristic. Transportation Science, 40(4), 421–
438.
Hvattum, L. M., Løkketangen, A., & Laporte, G. (2007). A branch-and-regret heuristic for stochas-
tic and dynamic vehicle routing problems. Networks, 49(4), 330–340.
Ichoua, S. (2001). Problèmes de gestion de flottes de véhicules en temps réel. PhD thesis, Université
de Montréal, Montréal, Canada.
Ichoua, S., Gendreau, M., & Potvin, J.-Y. (2000). Diversion issues in real-time vehicle dispatching.
Transportation Science, 34(4), 426–438.
Ichoua, S., Gendreau, M., & Potvin, J.-Y. (2003). Vehicle dispatching with time-dependent travel
times. European Journal of Operational Research, 144(2), 379–396.
Ichoua, S., Gendreau, M., & Potvin, J.-Y. (2006). Exploiting knowledge about future demands for
real-time vehicle dispatching. Transportation Science, 40(2), 211–225.
Ichoua, S., Gendreau, M., & Potvin, J.-Y. (2007). Planned route optimization for real-time ve-
hicle routing. In V. Zeimpekis, G. M. Giaglis, I. Minis & C. D. Tarantilis (Eds.), Operations
research/computer science interfaces series: Vol. 38. Dynamic fleet management (pp. 1–18).
Boston: Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-71722-7.
Irani, S., Lu, X., & Regan, A. (2004). On-line algorithms for the dynamic traveling repair problem.
Journal of Scheduling, 7(3), 243–258.
Israel, D. (2008). Data analysis in business research: a step-by-step nonparametric approach. Los
Angeles: SAGE. ISBN 9788178298757.
310 References
Jaillet, P. (1987). Stochastic routing problems. In G. Andreatta, F. Mason, & P. Serafini (Eds.),
Advanced school on stochastics in combinatorial optimization (pp. 197–213). Singapore: World
Scientific.
Jézéquel, A. (1985). Probabilistic vehicle routing problems. M.Sc. Dissertation, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
Johnston, R., & Clark, G. (2008). Service operations management: improving service delivery (3rd
ed.). Harlow: Prentice Hall. ISBN 9781405847322.
Jula, H., Dessouky, M., & Ioannou, P. A. (2008). Real-time estimation of travel times along the arcs
and arrival times at the nodes of dynamic stochastic networks. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent
Transportation Systems, 9(1), 97–110.
Kaplan, E. D., & Hegarty, C. J. (2006). Understanding GPS: principles and applications (2nd ed.).
Boston: Artech House. ISBN 1580538940.
Kendall, D. G. (1953). Stochastic processes occurring in the theory of queues and their analysis
by the method of the imbedded Markov chain. The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 24(3),
338–354.
Kenyon, A. S., & Morton, D. P. (2003). Stochastic vehicle routing with random travel times. Trans-
portation Science, 37(1), 69–82.
Kilby, P., Prosser, P., & Shaw, P. (1998). Dynamic VRPs: a study of scenarios (Technical Report
APES-06-1998). University of Strathclyde.
Klein Haneveld, W. K., & van der Vlerk, M. H. (1999). Stochastic integer programming: general
models and algorithms. Annals of Operations Research, 85, 39–57.
Kleywegt, A. J., Savelsbergh, M., & Uyar, E. (2009). A dynamic stochastic routing problem (Tech-
nical Report). Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA.
Kohout, R., & Erol, K. (1999). In-time agent-based vehicle routing with a stochastic improvement
heuristic. In Proceedings of the 16th national conference on artificial intelligence and the 11th
on innovative applications of artificial intelligence, Orlando, USA (pp. 864–869).
Korte, B., & Vygen, J. (2012). Algorithms and combinatorics: Vol. 21. Combinatorial optimiza-
tion: theory and algorithms (5th ed.). Berlin: Springer. ISBN 3642244874.
Kristensen, K., Kanji, G. K., & Dahlgaard, J. J. (1992). On measurement of customer satisfaction.
Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 3(2), 123–128.
Krumke, S. O., Rambau, J., & Torres, L. M. (2002). Real-time dispatching of guided and unguided
automobile service units with soft time windows. In R. Möhring & R. Raman (Eds.), Lec-
ture notes in computer science: Vol. 2461. Algorithms—ESA 2002 (pp. 417–424). Heidelberg:
Springer.
Kvam, P. H., & Vidakovic, B. (2007). Nonparametric statistics with applications to science and
engineering. Wiley series in probability and statistics. Hoboken: Wiley. ISBN 0470081473.
Kwan, M. K. (1962). Graphic programming using odd or even points. Chinese Mathematics, 1,
273–277.
Lackner, A. (2004). Göttinger Wirtschaftsinformatik: Vol. 47. Dynamische Tourenplanung mit aus-
gewählten Metaheuristiken: Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel des kapazitätsrestriktiven dynamis-
chen Tourenplanungsproblems mit Zeitfenstern: Univ., Diss.–Göttingen, 2004 (1st ed.). Göttin-
gen: Cuvillier. ISBN 3865370845.
Lambert, V., Laporte, G., & Louveaux, F. V. (1993). Designing collection routes through bank
branches. Computers & Operations Research, 20(7), 783–791.
Land, A. H., & Doig, A. G. (1960). An automatic method of solving discrete programming prob-
lems. Econometrica, 28(3), 497–520.
Laporte, G. (1992a). The vehicle routing problem: an overview of exact and approximate algo-
rithms. European Journal of Operational Research, 59(3), 345–358.
Laporte, G. (1992b). The traveling salesman problem: an overview of exact and approximate algo-
rithms. European Journal of Operational Research, 59(2), 231–247.
Laporte, G., & Louveaux, F. (1990). Formulations and bounds for the stochastic capacitated vehicle
routing problem with uncertain supplies. In J. Gabszewicz, J.-F. Richard & L. A. Wolsey (Eds.),
Economic decision-making (pp. 443–455). Amsterdam: North-Holland. ISBN 044488422X.
References 311
Laporte, G., & Nobert, Y. (1980). A cutting planes algorithm for the m-Salesmen Problem. Journal
of the Operational Research Society, 31(11), 1017–1023.
Laporte, G., Louveaux, F., & Mercure, H. (1992). The vehicle routing problem with stochastic
travel times. Transportation Science, 26(3), 161–170.
Laporte, G., Louveaux, F. V., & van Hamme, L. (2002). An integer L-shaped algorithm for the
capacitated vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands. Operations Research, 50(3), 415–
423.
Larsen, A. (2000). The dynamic vehicle routing problem. PhD Thesis, Technical University of
Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark.
Larsen, A., Madsen, O. B. G., & Solomon, M. M. (2002). Partially dynamic vehicle routing—
models and algorithms. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 53(6), 637–646.
Larsen, A., Madsen, O. B. G., & Solomon, M. M. (2004). The a priori dynamic Traveling Salesman
Problem with time windows. Transportation Science, 38(4), 459–472.
Larsen, A., Madsen, O. B. G., & Solomon, M. M. (2007). Classification of dynamic vehicle rout-
ing systems. In V. Zeimpekis, G. M. Giaglis, I. Minis & C. D. Tarantilis (Eds.), Operations
research/computer science interfaces series: Vol. 38. Dynamic fleet management (pp. 19–40).
Boston: Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-71722-7.
Larsen, A., Madsen, O. B. G., & Solomon, M. M. (2008). Recent developments in dynamic ve-
hicle routing systems. In B. L. Golden, S. Raghavan & E. A. Wasil (Eds.), Operations re-
search/computer science interfaces series: Vol. 43. The vehicle routing problem: latest advances
and new challenges (pp. 199–218). Heidelberg: Springer. ISBN 0387777776.
Larson, R. C., & Odoni, A. R. (1981). Urban operations research. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
http://web.mit.edu/urban_or_book/www/book/.
Law, A. M., & Kelton, W. D. (2000). McGraw-Hill series in industrial engineering and man-
agement science. Simulation modeling and analysis (3rd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. ISBN
0070592926.
Lenstra, J. K., & Rinnooy Kan, A. H. G. (1979). Computational complexity of discrete optimization
problems. In P. L. Hammer, E. L. Johnson & B. H. Korte (Eds.), Proceedings of the advanced
research institute on discrete optimization and systems applications of the systems science panel
of NATO and of the discrete optimization symposium: Vol. 4. Annals of discrete mathematics:
discrete optimization I (pp. 121–140). Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-85322-6.
Lenstra, J. K., & Rinnooy Kan, A. H. G. (1981). Complexity of vehicle routing and scheduling
problems. Networks, 11(2), 221–227.
Lew, A., & Mauch, H. (2007). Dynamic programming: a computational tool (1st ed.). Berlin:
Springer. ISBN 3642072003.
Li, J. Q., Mirchandani, P. B., & Borenstein, D. (2009a). Real-time vehicle rerouting problems with
time windows. European Journal of Operational Research, 194(3), 711–727.
Li, J. Q., Mirchandani, P. B., & Borenstein, D. (2009b). A Lagrangian heuristic for the real-time
vehicle rescheduling problem. Transportation Research. Part E, Logistics and Transportation
Review, 45(3), 419–433.
Lin, S. (1965). Computer solutions of the traveling salesman problem. The Bell System Technical
Journal, 44(10), 2245–2269.
Little, J. D. C., Murty, K. G., Sweeney, D. W., & Karel, C. (1963). An algorithm for the Traveling
Salesman Problem. Operations Research, 11(6), 972–989.
Lund, K., Madsen, O. B. G., & Rygaard, J. M. (1996). Vehicle routing with varying degrees of dy-
namism (Technical report IMM-REP-1996-1). Institute of Mathematical Modelling, Technical
University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark.
MacQueen, J. (1967). Some methods for classification and analysis of multivariate observations.
In L. M. Le Cam & J. Neyman (Eds.), Proceedings of the fifth Berkeley symposium on math-
ematical statistics and probability (Vol. 1, pp. 281–297). Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Malandraki, C., & Daskin, M. S. (1992). Time dependent vehicle routing problems: formulations,
properties and heuristic algorithms. Transportation Science, 26(3), 185–200.
312 References
Markus, K. G. (2009). Online stochastic vehicle routing. Master’s Thesis, Department of Mathe-
matics and Computer Science (IMADA), University of Southern Denmark.
Mendoza, J. E., Castanier, B., Guéret, C., Medaglia, A. L., & Velasco, N. (2009). Constructive
heuristics for the multi-compartment vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands (Techni-
cal report). Universidad de los Andes.
Mihram, G. A. (1972). Mathematics in science and engineering: Vol. 92. Simulation: statistical
foundations and methodology. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0124959504.
Miller, C. E., Tucker, A. W., & Zemlin, R. A. (1960). Integer programming formulation of traveling
salesman problems. Journal of the ACM, 7(4), 326–329.
Mintsis, G., Basbas, S., Papaioannou, P., Taxiltaris, C., & Tziavos, I. N. (2004). Applications of
GPS technology in the land transportation system: new technologies in transportation systems.
European Journal of Operational Research, 152(2), 399–409.
Mitchell, M. (1998). An introduction to genetic algorithms. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN
0262631857.
Mitrovic-Minic, S., & Laporte, G. (2004). Waiting strategies for the dynamic pickup and delivery
problem with time windows. Transportation Research. Part B: Methodological, 38(7), 635–
655.
Mitrovic-Minic, S., Krishnamurti, R., & Laporte, G. (2004). Double-horizon based heuristics for
the dynamic pickup and delivery problem with time windows. Transportation Research. Part B:
Methodological, 38(8), 669–685.
Moon, T. K. (2005). Error correction coding: mathematical methods and algorithms. Hoboken:
Wiley-Interscience. ISBN 0471648000.
Mu, Q., Fu, Z., Lysgaard, J., & Eglese, R. (2010). Disruption management of the vehicle routing
problem with vehicle breakdown. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 62(4), 742–749.
Muyldermans, L., & Pang, G. (2010). On the benefits of co-collection: experiments with a multi-
compartment vehicle routing algorithm. European Journal of Operational Research, 206(1),
93–103.
Nanry, W. P., & Wesley Barnes, J. (2000). Solving the pickup and delivery problem with time
windows using reactive tabu search. Transportation Research. Part B: Methodological, 34(2),
107–121.
Newspaper Association of America (2011). Annual Advertising Expenditures. http://www.naa.
org/Trends-and-Numbers/Advertising-Expenditures/Annual-All-Categories.aspx. Accessed on
2011-06-05.
Novoa, C., & Storer, R. (2009). An approximate dynamic programming approach for the vehicle
routing problem with stochastic demands. European Journal of Operational Research, 196(2),
509–515.
Novoa, C., Berger, R., Linderoth, J., & Storer, R. (2006). A set-partitioning-based model for the
stochastic vehicle routing problem (Technical Report 06T-008). Industrial and Systems Engi-
neering, Lehigh University, USA.
Núñez, A., Sáez, D., & Cortés, C. E. (2008). Hybrid predictive control for the vehicle dynamic rout-
ing problem based on Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization (EMO). In 17th IFAC world
congress, Seoul, Korea.
OpenStreetMap (2011). The OpenStreetMap Project. http://www.openstreetmap.org. Accessed on
2011-06-20.
Or, I. (1976). Traveling salesman-type combinatorial problems and their relation to the logistics
of regional blood banking. PhD Thesis, Northwestern University, Evanston.
Pankratz, G. (2002). Speditionelle Transportdisposition: Modell- und Verfahrensentwicklung
unter Berücksichtigung von Dynamik und Fremdvergabe. Diss. FernUniv. Hagen. Wiesbaden:
Deutscher Universitätsverlag. ISBN 3824476681.
Papastavrou, J. D. (1996). A stochastic and dynamic routing policy using branching processes with
state dependent immigration. European Journal of Operational Research, 95(1), 167–177.
Parasuraman, A. (1987). Customer-oriented corporate cultures are crucial to services marketing
success. The Journal of Services Marketing, 1(1), 39–46.
References 313
Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1985). A conceptual model of service quality
and its implications for future research. The Journal of Marketing, 49(4), 41–50.
Parasuraman, A., Berry, L. L., & Zeithaml, V. A. (1991). Understanding customer expectations of
service. Sloan Management Review, 32(3), 39–48.
Park, S. K., & Miller, K. W. (1988). Random number generators: good ones are hard to find.
Communications of the ACM, 31(10), 1192–1201.
Park, S. K., Miller, K. W., & Stockmeyer, P. K. (1993). Technical correspondence: remarks on
choosing and implementing random number generators. Communications of the ACM, 36(7),
105. doi:10.1145/159544.376068.
Parragh, S., Doerner, K., & Hartl, R. (2008). A survey on pickup and delivery problems: Part I:
transportation between customers and depot. Journal für Betriebswirtschaft, 58(1), 21–51.
Perugini, D., Lambert, D., Sterling, L., & Pearce, A. (2003). A distributed agent approach to global
transportation scheduling. In 2003 IEEE/WIC international conference on intelligent agent tech-
nology (IAT ’03), Halifax, Canada.
Pillac, V., Guéret, A., & Medaglia, A. (2010). Vehicle routing problems: state of the art and
prospects (Technical report, 10/4/AUTO). Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France.
Pollack, B. L. (2009). Linking the hierarchical service quality model to customer satisfaction and
loyalty. The Journal of Services Marketing, 23(1), 42–50.
Potvin, J.-Y., & Rousseau, J. M. (1995). An exchange heuristic for routeing problems with time
windows. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 46(12), 1433–1446.
Powell, W. B. (1988). A comparative review of alternative algorithms for the dynamic vehicle
allocation problem. In B. L. Golden (Ed.), Studies in management science and systems. Vehicle
routing (pp. 249–291). Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 0444704078.
Powell, W. B. (1996). A stochastic formulation of the dynamic assignment problem, with an appli-
cation to truckload motor carriers. Transportation Science, 30(3), 195–219.
Powell, W. B. (2007). Approximate dynamic programming: solving the curses of dimensionality.
Hoboken: Wiley-Interscience. ISBN 0470171553.
Powell, W. B. (2009). What you should know about approximate dynamic programming. Naval
Research Logistics, 56(3), 239–249.
Powell, W. B., & Topaloglu, H. (2005). Fleet management. In S. W. Wallace & W. T. Ziemba (Eds.),
MPS-SIAM series on optimization: Vol. 5. Applications of stochastic programming (pp. 185–
215). Philadelphia: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. ISBN 0898715555.
Powell, W. B., Jaillet, P., & Odoni, A. (1995). Stochastic and dynamic networks and routing. In
Handbooks in operations research and management science (Vol. 8, pp. 141–295).
Psaraftis, H. N. (1980). Dynamic programming solution to the single vehicle many-to-many im-
mediate request dial-a-ride problem. Transportation Science, 14(2), 130–154.
Psaraftis, H. N. (1988). Dynamic vehicle routing problems. In B. L. Golden (Ed.), Studies in
management science and systems. Vehicle routing (pp. 223–248). Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN
0444704078.
Psaraftis, H. N. (1995). Dynamic vehicle routing: status and prospects. Annals of Operations Re-
search, 61(1), 143–164.
Pureza, V., & Laporte, G. (2008). Waiting and buffering strategies for the dynamic pickup and
delivery problem with time windows. INFOR. Information Systems and Operational Research,
46(3), 165–176.
Puterman, M. L. (2005). Wiley series in probability and statistics. Markov decision processes: dis-
crete stochastic dynamic programming. Hoboken: Wiley-Interscience. ISBN 9780470316887.
Regan, A. C., Mahmassani, H. S., & Jaillet, P. (1995). Improving efficiency of commercial vehicle
operations using real-time information: potential uses and assignment strategies. Transportation
Research Record, 1493, 188–198.
Regan, A. C., Mahmassani, H. S., & Jaillet, P. (1998). Evaluation of dynamic fleet management
systems: simulation framework. Transportation Research Record, 1645, 176–184.
Rice, J., & Caniato, F. (2003). Building a secure and resilient supply network. Supply Chain Man-
agement Review, 7(5), 22–30.
314 References
Richter, A. (2005). Dynamische Tourenplanung: Modifikation von klassischen Heuristiken für das
Dynamische Rundreiseproblem (DTSP) und das Dynamische Tourenplanungsproblem (DVRP)
mit der Möglichkeit der Änderung des aktuellen Fahrzeugzuges. PhD Thesis, University of
Dresden, Germany.
Rodgers, J. L., & Nicewander, W. A. (1988). Thirteen ways to look at the correlation coefficient.
American Statistician, 42(1), 59–66.
Ropke, S., & Pisinger, D. (2006). An adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic for the pickup
and delivery problem with time windows. Transportation Science, 40(4), 455–472.
Ross, S. M. (2010). Introduction to probability models (10th ed.). Burlington: Academic
Press/Elsevier. ISBN 0123756863.
Sáez, D., Cortés, C. E., & Núñez, A. (2008). Hybrid adaptive predictive control for the multi-
vehicle dynamic pick-up and delivery problem based on genetic algorithms and fuzzy clustering.
Computers & Operations Research, 35(11), 3412–3438.
Sapsford, R., & Jupp, V. (2006). Data collection and analysis (2nd ed.). London: SAGE. ISBN
9780761943631.
Savelsbergh, M. W. P. (1992). The vehicle routing problem with time windows: minimizing route
duration. ORSA Journal on Computing, 4, 146–154.
Savelsbergh, M. W. P., & Sol, M. (1995). The general pickup and delivery problem. Transportation
Science, 29(1), 17–29.
Savelsbergh, M. W. P., & Sol, M. (1998). DRIVE: dynamic routing of independent vehicles. Op-
erations Research, 46(4), 474–490.
Schmid, V. (2012). Solving the dynamic ambulance relocation and dispatching problem using ap-
proximate dynamic programming. European Journal of Operational Research, 219(3), 611–
621.
Schmidt, J. W., & Taylor, R. E. (1970). Simulation and analysis of industrial systems. Homewood:
Richard D. Irwin.
Schönberger, J. (2010). Adaptive demand peak management in online transport process planning.
OR Spektrum, 32(3), 831–859.
Schultes, D. (2008). Route Planning in Road Networks. PhD Thesis, Karlsruhe Institute of Tech-
nology.
Secomandi, N. (2000). Comparing neuro-dynamic programming algorithms for the vehicle routing
problem with stochastic demands. Computers & Operations Research, 27(11-12), 1201–1225.
Secomandi, N., & Margot, F. (2009). Reoptimization approaches for the vehicle-routing problem
with stochastic demands. Operations Research, 57(1), 214–230.
Sedgewick, R. (1983). Addison-Wesley series in computer science. Algorithms. Reading: Addison-
Wesley. ISBN 0201066726.
Séguin, R., Potvin, J.-Y., Gendreau, M., Crainic, T. G., & Marcotte, P. (1997). Real-time decision
problems: an operational research perspective. Journal of the Operational Research Society,
48(2), 162–174.
Sexton, T., & Choi, Y. (1986). Pickup and delivery of partial loads with “soft” time windows.
American Journal of Mathematical and Management Sciences, 6(3-4), 369–398.
Sexton, T. R., & Bodin, L. D. (1985). Optimizing single vehicle many-to-many operations with
desired delivery times: I. scheduling. Transportation Science, 19(4), 378–410.
Sleator, D. D., & Tarjan, R. E. (1985). Amortized efficiency of list update and paging rules. Com-
munications of the ACM, 28(2), 202–208.
Smith, A. K., Bolton, R. N., & Wagner, J. (1999). A model of customer satisfaction with service
encounters involving failure and recovery. Journal of Marketing Research, 36(3), 356–372.
Solomon, M. M. (1987). Algorithms for the vehicle routing and scheduling problems with time
window constraints. Operations Research, 35(2), 254–265.
Stenfors, S., Tanner, L., Syrjänen, M., Seppälä, T., & Haapalinna, I. (2007). Executive views con-
cerning decision support tools. European Journal of Operational Research, 181(2), 929–938.
Stone, J., Stewart, R., & Otis, D. (2002). RFC3309: Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
checksum change. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3309.txt. Accessed on 2008-08-03.
References 315
Stone, J. R. (2001). Checksums and the internet. PhD diss, Department of Computer Science,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3028177.
Stumpf, P. (1998). GVB: Schriftenreihe: Vol. 39 Tourenplanung im speditionellen Güterfern-
verkehr: Univ., Diss.–Augsburg, 1998 (1st ed.). Nürnberg: GVB. ISBN 3922665349.
Swihart, M. R., & Papastavrou, J. D. (1999). A stochastic and dynamic model for the single-vehicle
pick-up and delivery problem. European Journal of Operational Research, 114(3), 447–464.
Tarantilis, C. D., & Kiranoudis, C. T. (2007). A flexible adaptive memory-based algorithm for real-
life transportation operations: two case studies from dairy and construction sector. European
Journal of Operational Research, 179(3), 806–822.
Tarantilis, C. D., Diakoulaki, D., & Kiranoudis, C. T. (2004). Combination of geographical infor-
mation system and efficient routing algorithms for real life distribution operations: new tech-
nologies in transportation systems. European Journal of Operational Research, 152(2), 437–
453.
Tax, S. S., Brown, S. W., & Chandrashekaran, M. (1998). Customer evaluations of service com-
plaint experiences: implications for relationship marketing. The Journal of Marketing, 62(2),
60–76.
Telefónica Germany GmbH & Co. OHG (2011). Tarif o2 Active Data Card. http://www.
o2online.de/nw/tarife/datentarif/datentarif.html. Accessed on 2011-06-20.
Thangiah, S. R., Osman, I. H., Vinayagamoorthy, R., & Sun, T. (1993). Algorithms for the vehicle
routing problems with time deadlines. American Journal of Mathematical and Management
Sciences, 13(3-4), 323–355.
The Media Audit (2011). Daily Newspaper Websites see 5.6 Percent Growth. http://
www.themediaaudit.com/press/archived-newsletters/the-media-audit-fyi/march-2011/daily-
newspaper-websites-see-56-percent-growth. Accessed on 2011-07-29.
Thomas, B. W. (2007). Waiting strategies for anticipating service requests from known customer
locations. Transportation Science, 41(3), 319–331.
Thomas, B. W., & White III, C. C. (2004). Anticipatory route selection. Transportation Science,
38(4), 473–487.
Tijms, H. C. (2003). A first course in stochastic models (2nd ed.). Chichester: Wiley.
Tillman, F. A. (1969). The multiple terminal delivery problem with probabilistic demands. Trans-
portation Science, 3(3), 192–204.
Toth, P., & Vigo, D. (Eds.) (2002). SIAM monographs on discrete mathematics and applications.
The vehicle routing problem. Philadelphia: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
ISBN 0898714982.
Uyar, E. (2008). Routing in stochastic environments. PhD Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology.
van de Klundert, J., & Wormer, L. (2010). ASAP: the After-Salesman Problem. Manufacturing &
Service Operations Management, 12, 627–641.
van Hemert, J. I., & La Poutré, J. A. (2004). Dynamic routing problems with fruitful regions:
models and evolutionary computation. In X. Yao, E. Burke, J. A. Lozano, J. Smith, J. J. Merelo-
Guervós, J. A. Bullinaria, J. Rowe, P. Tino, A. Kabán & H.-P. Schwefel (Eds.), Lecture notes in
computer science: Vol. 3242. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature—PPSN VIII (pp. 692–701).
Berlin: Springer.
van Hentenryck, P., & Bent, R. (2009). Online stochastic combinatorial optimization. Cambridge:
MIT Press. ISBN 0262513471.
Verweij, B., Ahmed, S., Kleywegt, A. J., Nemhauser, G., & Shapiro, A. (2003). The sample av-
erage approximation method applied to stochastic routing problems: a computational study.
Computational Optimization and Applications, 24(2-3), 289–333.
Weiss, G. (2000). Multiagent systems: a modern approach to distributed artificial intelligence (2nd
ed.). Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0262731312.
Westphal, S., & Krumke, S. O. (2008). Pruning in column generation for service vehicle dispatch-
ing. Annals of Operations Research, 159(1), 355–371.
Wilson, N. H. M., & Colvin, N. J. (1977). Computer control of the Rochester dial-a-ride system
(Technical report R-77-30). Department of Civil Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology, Center for Transportation Studies, Cambridge, MA.
316 References
Wu, C. W., Beck, J. C., & Brown, K. N. (2004). Dynamic vehicle routing with uncertain customer
demand. In Proceedings of Changes ’04 (International workshop on constraint solving under
change and uncertainty at CP2004), Toronto, Canada (pp. 75–76).
Xu, R. (2005). Survey of clustering algorithms. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, 16(3),
645–678.
Yang, J., Jaillet, P., & Mahmassani, H. S. (2004). Real-time multivehicle truckload pickup and
delivery problems. Transportation Science, 38(2), 135–148.
Yang, W. H., Mathur, K., & Ballou, R. H. (2000). Stochastic vehicle routing problem with restock-
ing. Transportation Science, 34(1), 99–112.
Yates, D., Moore, D., & McCabe, G. (1999). The practice of statistics (1st ed.). New York: Free-
man. ISBN 0716737744.
Zeimpekis, V., & Giaglis, G. M. (2005). A dynamic real-time vehicle routing system for distri-
bution operations. In G. J. Doukidis & A. P. Vrechopoulos (Eds.), Consumer driven electronic
transformation (pp. 23–37). Berlin: Springer. ISBN 978-3-540-27059-1.
Zeimpekis, V., Giaglis, G. M., & Minis, I. (2005). A dynamic real-time fleet management system
for incident handling in city logistics. In IEEE 61st vehicular technology conference, VTC 2005-
Spring, Stockholm, Sweden (Vol. 5, pp. 2900–2904).
Zeithaml, V. A., Berry, L. L., & Parasuraman, A. (1996). The behavioral consequences of service
quality. The Journal of Marketing, 60(2), 31–46.
Zhan, F. B. (1997). Three fastest shortest path algorithms on real road networks: data structures
and procedures. Journal of Geographic Information and Decision Analysis, 1(1), 69–82.
Zhan, F. B., & Noon, C. E. (1998). Shortest path algorithms: an evaluation using real road net-
works. Transportation Science, 32(1), 65–73.
Zhan, F. B., & Noon, C. E. (2000). A comparison between label-setting and label-correcting algo-
rithms for computing one-to-one shortest paths. Journal of Geographic Information and Deci-
sion Analysis, 4(2), 1–11.
Index
Q S
Quadratic customer inconvenience function, Segment-based clustering, 10, 13, 168, 171,
161, 163, 224, 236, 251, 252, 254, 256, 210, 277
258, 260, 261, 263, 269, 275 Segments, 172–174, 178, 179, 183, 210,
231–234, 271, 277
R Service level agreement, xi, 6
RD, 212–215, 227, 228, 231, 233, 242, 243, Service quality, 2, 3, 6, 59, 62, 68, 70, 72, 137,
245–249, 255, 259, 263, 275 138, 140, 267, 268, 278
Index 319
Stochastic knowledge, iv, ix–xiii, 3, 9–13, 38, Theoretical tour plan, 152, 155, 188, 200
43–47, 49, 51–53, 55–58, 68, 71, 74, Three-dimensional convex area, 173
78, 79, 83–87, 90, 91, 94, 98, 100–103, Threshold-based approach, 257, 266, 276
108–110, 114–131, 133–137, 145–147, TimeDiversity, 212, 242, 243, 249, 274
151, 158, 165, 167–173, 177–179, 183, TIMELIMIT10, 220–225, 234, 236, 240–243,
198, 203–205, 210, 211, 215, 219, 223, 245, 246, 254–256, 258–263, 266, 273
228, 230–238, 240–242, 246, 247, TIMELIMIT10NODIV, 224, 225
249–251, 253, 254, 263–265, 268–279 Time-space Poisson process, 172, 183, 212,
Strategic layer, 7 271
Structural distortion, x, xii, 11, 13, 146, 147, Tour plan adaptation, xii, 10, 39, 41, 51, 52,
204, 205, 211, 216, 226–231, 234, 241, 55, 57, 62–64, 67, 70, 83, 96, 109, 127,
246, 248, 262–265, 273–275, 277, 279 143, 144, 152, 157, 158, 163, 168, 169,
Structural diversity, x, xii, xiii, 11, 13, 146, 219, 235, 270, 271
147, 204, 205, 211–216, 220, 232–235,
240, 241, 244–250, 252, 254, 262–265, V
272, 274, 275, 279 Vehicle scheduling decisions, 34, 35, 84
Structural quality, xii, xiii, 9, 11, 13, 14, 56, Visual analysis, xiii, 147, 238, 244, 265, 274,
146, 147, 174, 204, 205, 212, 238, 241, 275
246, 248–251, 253, 254, 262–266, 268, VRP, xvi, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24, 27, 29, 30,
272, 275, 279 32–36, 39, 47, 49–51, 67, 79, 85, 86,
Subareas, 172, 173, 183, 210, 227, 240, 93, 97, 98, 103, 121, 142, 195, 269, 279
244–246, 250, 265, 271, 274, 275
Subsequent delivery of newspapers, xi, xii, 3, W
4, 8, 9, 72, 73, 82, 85, 159, 211, 262, WTI, 190–192, 199
272, 278
X
T X 2 test statistic, 176
Tabu list, 185–187, 189, 196–198, 200, 272 XBT, 190, 195, 196, 199
Tactical layer, 8
TD, 212–215, 227, 228, 230, 231, 233, 235, Z
246–249, 255, 257, 258, 263, 275 ZEROTIME, 220–223