AIRO Springer Series 6

Adriano Masone
Veronica Dal Sasso
Valentina Morandi Editors

Optimization
and Data
Science: Trends
and Applications
5th AIROYoung Workshop and AIRO PhD
School 2021 Joint Event
AIRO Springer Series

Volume 6

Editor-in-Chief
Daniele Vigo, Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia Elettrica e dell’Informazione
“Gugliemo Marconi”, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Series Editors
Alessandro Agnetis, Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione e Scienze
Matematiche, Università degli Studi di Siena, Siena, Italy
Edoardo Amaldi, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria
(DEIB), Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
Francesca Guerriero, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica, Energetica e
Gestionale (DIMEG), Università della Calabria, Rende, Italy
Stefano Lucidi, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica Automatica e Gestionale
“Antonio Ruberti” (DIAG), Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy
Enza Messina, Dipartimento di Informatica Sistemistica e Comunicazione,
Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Antonio Sforza, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica e Tecnologie
dell’Informazione, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy
The AIRO Springer Series focuses on the relevance of operations research (OR) in
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Adriano Masone • Veronica Dal Sasso •
Valentina Morandi
Editors

Optimization and Data

Science: Trends and
Applications
5th AIROYoung Workshop and AIRO PhD
School 2021 Joint Event
Editors
Adriano Masone Veronica Dal Sasso
Department of Electrical Engineering Optrail
and Information Technology Rome, Italy
University of Naples “Federico II”
Naples, Italy

Valentina Morandi
Faculty of Science and Technology
Free University of Bozen
Bolzano, Italy

ISSN 2523-7047 ISSN 2523-7055 (electronic)

AIRO Springer Series
ISBN 978-3-030-86285-5 ISBN 978-3-030-86286-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2

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Preface

This book contains the proceedings of the 5th AIRO Young Workshop and AIRO
PhD School 2021 joint event on “Optimization and Data Science: Trends and
Applications,” held online, from February 8 to 12, 2021.
This volume presents methodological and application-oriented contributions
relating to optimization and data science methods, as well as a large variety of
applications in computer science, healthcare, logistics, and transportation. The 14
accepted contributions are organized in 5 topical parts: Data Science and Machine
Learning, Healthcare, Logistics, Optimization for Control Systems, and OR in
Industry. In each part, the contributions are listed alphabetically by the last name
of the first author.
In the first part, “Data Science and Machine Learning”, the reader will find the
following contributions.
• Reinforcement learning for the Knapsack Problem, by Pierotti et al. The
complexity of combinatorial optimization (CO) problems makes it difficult to
find the optimal solution via an exact solution method. In recent years, machine
learning (ML) has brought immense benefits in many research areas, including
heuristic solution methods for CO problems. Among ML methods, reinforcement
learning (RL) seems to be the most promising method. In this work, the authors
investigate an RL framework to achieve solutions for the knapsack problem.
The presented algorithm finds close to optimal solutions for instances up to one
hundred items, which leads to the conjecture that RL and self-attention may be
major building blocks for future state-of-the-art heuristics for other CO problems.
• Potential sales estimates of a new store, by Tozzi and Guarino. This work
describes a real application consisting in the estimation of new point of sales
(PoS) potential. The potential of a PoS is measured in terms of estimated sales
in its second year of activity with respect to the opening date of the contract.
The authors propose an original approach based on the combined use of gradient
boosting and convolutional neural network. The aim is to support sales managers
with an automatic tool returning the most promising PoS.

v
vi Preface

• Sells optimization through product rotation, by Tozzi and Guarino. A

company aims at maximizing the vending machines (VMs) sales within a points
of sale (PoS) network. The sales of a VM decrease proportionally to the number
of days the VM remains in the same PoS. A “novelty effect” arises when the VM
is moved in a different PoS. The “novelty effect” leads to an increase of the VM
sales in the first period of exposure of the VM in the different PoS. In this work,
the authors optimally solve the problem of determining the rotation of the VMs
within the PoS network which maximizes the VM sales.
In the second part, “Healthcare”, the reader will find the following contribu-
tions.
• Gathering avoiding centralized pedestrian advice framework: an applica-
tion for COVID-19 outbreak restrictions, by Dal Sasso and Morandi. Due
to the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining a safe distance among pedestrians
becomes crucial in big pedestrian networks. Looking at personal goals, such as
walking through the shortest path, could lead to congestion phenomena on both
roads and crossroads, violating the imposed regulations. To this end, the authors
suggest a centralized multi-objective approach able to assign alternative fair paths
for users while maintaining the congestion level as low as possible.
• A MILP formulation for the reorganization of the blood supply chain in
Italian regions, by Mancuso et al. Blood is a vital resource for a human being
and it is crucial for surgeries and medical emergencies. Thus, blood supply chain
management has generated great interest in terms of efficient and effective policy
making and system design. In this context, a mixed-integer linear programming
formulation is presented to determine the optimal location and the number of
blood facilities on a regional scale, with the aim of minimizing system costs
while guaranteeing a good standard service level.
In the third part, “Logistics”, the reader will find the following contributions.
• Instance generation framework for green vehicle routing, by Andrade and
Usberti. In the green vehicle routing problems (G-VRP), electric vehicles with
limited autonomy can recharge at alternative fuel stations (AFSs) to keep visiting
customers. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the G-VRP scientific literature
accounts for only two sets of instances. Hence, in this chapter they propose a
framework for generating relevant sets of instances for G-VRP, based on solving
a maximum leaf spanning tree problem to address the location of AFSs. Two
G-VRP variants are considered, where consecutive AFSs visits are allowed, and
where they are not allowed.
• An optimization model for service requests management in a 5G network
architecture, by Colajanni and Sciacca. The authors present a three-tier supply
chain network model consisting of a fleet of UAVs organized as a FANET (fly
ad hoc network) connected to each other with direct wireless links, managed
by a fleet of UAV controllers, whose purpose is to provide 5G network slices
on demand to users and devices on the ground. The aim of this contribution is
to determine the optimal distributions of request flows. The authors formulate a
Preface vii

constrained optimization problem and derive the associated variational inequality

formulation. A numerical example is performed to validate the effectiveness of
the model.
• A MIP model for freight consolidation in road transportation considering
outsourced fleet, by Viera and Munari. The chapter addresses the freight
consolidation problem with outsourced fleet. The work is motivated by a
Brazilian real-life situation of a major manufacturer of school supplies which
has to optimally assign shipments to vehicles in a way to minimize the total
transportation cost. The challenge is given by the complex pricing table provided
by outsourcing companies. In fact, outsourcing cost functions follow a piecewise
linear behavior of the cost function, which makes the consolidation more diffi-
cult. A mixed-integer linear programming (MIP) model, which fully represents
the problem, is proposed, and costs reductions of more than 44%, with respect to
the usual freight consolidation policy of the company, have been observed.
In the fourth part, “Optimization for Control Systems”, the reader will find:
• Energy-oriented inter-vehicle distance optimization for heterogeneous E-
platoons, by Coppola et al. Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs)
have the potential to improve the energy efficiency of transportation systems.
In particular, the inter-vehicle distance plays a critical role for energy-saving
purposes. On this basis, this contribution proposes a novel optimization algorithm
to compute the optimal gap distance in a heterogeneous platoon of electric CAVs
by exploiting a distance-dependent air drag coefficient formulation.
• Optimization-based assessment of initial-state opacity in Petri Nets, by
De Tommasi et al. When dealing with security and safety problems, discrete
events systems could be a convenient way to model the behavior of distributed
dynamical systems. In this context, a valuable property of a system is the
opacity. This property is related to the capability of hiding a secret to external
observers. In this chapter, leveraging the mathematical representation of Petri
Nets, the authors present a feasibility problem with integer optimization variables
verifying a sufficient condition which permits to assess if a system is not opaque.
• Eco-driving adaptive cruise control via model predictive control enhanced
with improved Grey Wolf optimization algorithm, by Petrillo et al. In this
chapter, a novel ecological adaptive cruise control system for an autonomous
electric vehicle is suggested. The proposed system is able to drive its motion
while minimizing as much as possible its energy consumption. To this aim, the
authors considered a nonlinear model predictive control method enhanced with
an offline computational intelligence-based optimization algorithm.
In the fifth part, OR in Industry, the reader will find:
• Optimizing and evaluating a maintenance strategy for multi-component
systems, by Bautista Bárcena and Torres Castro. Maintenance optimization
is a key challenge in engineering and industry. In this chapter, a system with
monitored and non-monitored components is considered where components
respectively deteriorate following a gamma process and a Poisson process.
viii Preface

The goal is to minimize the time slot between inspections and, hence, to find
the minimum cost maintenance plan. Different techniques for the optimization
process are employed such as a Monte Carlo simulation and meta-heuristic
algorithms.
• Metal additive manufacturing: Nesting vs. scheduling, by Kucukkoc. In
additive manufacturing (AM), parts are produced through a layer-by-layer
production process. Selective laser melting (SLM) is a popular AM technology
used to build metal components. Although it may seem a high-cost process at first
glance, it can be compensated with efficient planning and scheduling systems. In
this chapter, the author aims to investigate the relationship between nesting and
scheduling when planning and scheduling SLM machines.
• System and methods for blockchain-inspired digital game asset manage-
ment, by Ragnoni. In this chapter, the optimal design of a fully managed ledger
database providing a transparent, immutable, and cryptographically verifiable
platform for managing the creation of digital assets (e.g., game ticket) and
the transfer of asset’s ownership between users is described. The aim of this
contribution is to present the usefulness of the resulting platform, its features,
and its functioning mechanism.
As editors of the volume, we thank AIRO and AIROYoung, the invited lecturers,
the authors, and the researchers who spent their time for the review process,
contributing to improve the quality of the selected contributions. A special thanks
should be addressed to the AIROYoung representatives and the Operations Research
Group of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of
the University “Federico II” of Naples who organized the joint event.
Finally, we express our gratitude to Springer for its strong support and coopera-
tion during the event and the publishing process.

Rome, Italy Veronica Dal Sasso

Naples, Italy Adriano Masone
Bolzano, Italy Valentina Morandi
Contents

Part I Data Science and Machine Learning

Reinforcement Learning for the Knapsack Problem .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Jacopo Pierotti, Maximilian Kronmueller, Javier Alonso-Mora, J. Theresia
van Essen, and Wendelin Böhmer
Potential Sales Estimates of a New Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Jacopo Tozzi and Francesco Guarino
Sells Optimization Through Product Rotation . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Jacopo Tozzi and Francesco Guarino

Part II Healthcare
Gathering Avoiding Centralized Pedestrian Advice Framework:
An Application for Covid-19 Outbreak Restrictions . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Veronica Dal Sasso and Valentina Morandi
A MILP Formulation for the Reorganization of the Blood Supply
Chain in Italian Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Antonio Diglio, Andrea Mancuso, Adriano Masone, Carmela Piccolo,
and Claudio Sterle

Part III Logistics

Instance Generation Framework for Green Vehicle Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Matheus Diógenes Andrade and Fábio Luiz Usberti
An Optimization Model for Service Requests Management in a
5G Network Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Gabriella Colajanni and Daniele Sciacca
A MIP Model for Freight Consolidation in Road Transportation
Considering Outsourced Fleet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Thiago Vieira and Pedro Munari

ix
x Contents

Part IV Optimization for Control Systems

Energy-Oriented Inter-Vehicle Distance Optimization for
Heterogeneous E-Platoons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Bianca Caiazzo, Angelo Coppola, Alberto Petrillo, and Stefania Santini
Optimization-Based Assessment of Initial-State Opacity in Petri Nets . . . . 127
Gianmaria De Tommasi, Carlo Motta, Alberto Petrillo, and Stefania
Santini
Eco-Driving Adaptive Cruise Control via Model Predictive
Control Enhanced with Improved Grey Wolf Optimization Algorithm . . . 139
Raffaele Cappiello, Fabrizio Di Rosa, Alberto Petrillo, and Stefania
Santini

Part V OR in Industry
Optimizing and Evaluating a Maintenance Strategy for
Multi-Component Systems .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Lucía Bautista Bárcena and Inmaculada T. Castro
Metal Additive Manufacturing: Nesting vs. Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Ibrahim Kucukkoc
System and Methods for Blockchain-Inspired Digital Game Asset
Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Gianluca Ragnoni
About the Editors

Adriano Masone is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Electrical

Engineering and Information Technology of the University of Naples “Federico II.”
He obtained his PhD in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering in 2020
at the University of Naples “Federico II.” In 2018–2019, he was a Visiting Scholar
at the Robert H. Smith School of Business of the University of Maryland, Maryland,
USA. His areas of research include exact and heuristic solution methods for complex
combinatorial and network optimization problems with application to healthcare,
transportation, logistics, production planning and scheduling, among others.
Veronica Dal Sasso holds a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Padova.
After the completion of the PhD, she held a postdoc at Lancaster University, where
she was involved in the OptiFrame project, a project funded by the European
Union under the Horizon 2020 agreement. In 2018, she moved to Rome and started
working at Optrail as Operations Research Scientist. Optrail is a company devoted
to providing innovative decision support solutions for the railway industry. She is
the founder and current treasurer of AIROYoung, and she was part of the organizing
committees for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th AIROYoung Workshops.
Valentina Morandi is an Assistant Researcher in the Science and Technology
faculty at Free University of Bolzano/Bozen. She obtained her PhD in Analytics
for Economics and Business in 2017 at the University of Bergamo jointly with
the University of Brescia. Her research activities focus on congestion avoiding
traffic assignment techniques and fair models for logistics, public transportation,
and pedestrians. She teaches Operations Research in the Mechanical Engineering
course, and she won the Euregio Best Young Researcher in 2019 for her research
project on models for fair vehicular traffic management.

xi
 Part I
Data Science and Machine Learning
Reinforcement Learning for the
Knapsack Problem

Jacopo Pierotti, Maximilian Kronmueller, Javier Alonso-Mora,

J. Theresia van Essen, and Wendelin Böhmer

Abstract Combinatorial optimization (CO) problems are at the heart of both

practical and theoretical research. Due to their complexity, many problems cannot be
solved via exact methods in reasonable time; hence, we resort to heuristic solution
methods. In recent years, machine learning (ML) has brought immense benefits
in many research areas, including heuristic solution methods for CO problems.
Among ML methods, reinforcement learning (RL) seems to be the most promising
method to find good solutions for CO problems. In this work, we investigate an
RL framework, whose agent is based on self-attention, to achieve solutions for the
knapsack problem, which is a CO problem. Our algorithm finds close to optimal
solutions for instances up to one hundred items, which leads to conjecture that RL
and self-attention may be major building blocks for future state-of-the-art heuristics
for other CO problems.

Keywords Reinforcement learning · Multi-task DQN · End-to-end · Knapsack

problem · Transformer · Self-attention

1 Introduction

In recent years, machine learning (ML) has shown super-human capabilities in

speech recognition, language translation, image classification, etc. [4, 12, 16].
Lately, more and more combinatorial optimization (CO) problems have been studied
under the lens of machine learning [3]. Among these CO problems, NP-hard
problems are of interest because, so far, solving them to optimality (via so-called
exact methods) takes exponential time; thus, for many classes of CO problems,
obtaining good solutions for large or even medium sized instances in reasonable
time can only be achieved by exploiting handcrafted heuristics. Instead of creating

J. Pierotti () M. Kronmueller · J. Alonso-Mora · J. T. van Essen · W. Böhmer

TU Delft, Delft, Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]; [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 3

A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_1
4 J. Pierotti et al.

a heuristic by hand, one can also use ML to train a neural network to predict an
almost optimal solution for given or randomly generated CO instances [3]. This
way heuristics can be learned without expert knowledge of the problem domain,
which is also called end-to-end training. Reinforcement learning (RL) seems to be
the most promising end-to-end method to solve combinatorial problems [2]. In fact,
in difference to supervised ML, RL does not need to know the solutions to given
training instances to learn a good heuristic. This way one can learn a heuristic
without any domain knowledge and, in principle, one could find a heuristic that
works better than any a human would be able to design. RL has been used to train the
neural networks used by heuristics designed to solve CO problems [9–11], including
the knapsack problem (KP) [2]. The aim of this paper is to develop an RL end-
to-end algorithm for the knapsack problem based on attention [16], in difference
to prior work that used either recurring neural networks (RNN) or convolutional
neural networks (CNN) [4, 12] (which are popular NN for end-to-end methods). By
developing such an algorithm for a relatively easy CO problem (the KP) [13], we
want to assess if RL with attention can be a fruitful method to tackle other, more
complex, CO problems, which will be the focus of future research.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The formulation of the KP,
our motivations on how and why we use attention and not RNNs or CNNs, and
model architecture are presented in Sect. 2. The training distributions (i.e. bench-
marks of instances) used for testing and evaluating as well as the computational
results are detailed in Sect. 3. Finally, in Sect. 4, we illustrate our conclusions.

2 Problem Formulation and Background Information

The knapsack problem (KP) is one of the most studied CO problems [13]. As input,
we have a set of objects (denoted by set N) and a knapsack of capacity W . Each
object i ∈ N has a positive profit pi and a positive weight wi . The objective of
the problem is to maximize the sum of the profits of the collected objects without
violating the capacity constraint. Introducing binary variables xi , which assume
value one if object i ∈ N is selected and zero otherwise, we can write the problem
as follows:

max xi pi (1)
i∈N

xi wi ≤ W (2)
i∈N

xi ∈ {0, 1} ∀i ∈ N. (3)

The objective function (1) maximizes the total profit of the selected objects,
constraint (2) acts as the capacity constraint, and constraints (3) force the variables
to be binary. This integer linear program (ILP) belongs to the class of NP-hard
Reinforcement Learning for the Knapsack Problem 5

problems [13], which means that the computation time for obtaining optimal
solutions with known exact solution methods grows exponentially with the number
of objects. A simple yet very powerful heuristic is to sort the objects in non-
pi
increasing order of their ratio, i.e., qi = for i ∈ N, and collect them in order as
wi
long as constraint (2) is respected (collecting non-consecutive objects is allowed).
In the following, we refer to this as the simple heuristic.

2.1 Reinforcement Learning Framework

In this section, we give an overview of how we implemented our algorithm. For

more details on RL, we refer the reader to [14]. Our algorithm belongs to the area
of multi-task RL [17], where a task is an instance of the knapsack problem. The
difference between single and multi-tasks is that: in single-task, we want to learn a
policy to always solve the same (instance of a) problem; in multi-task, we want to
learn a policy to solve a family of different instances of a problem (or even different
problems). Moreover, while in single-task the initial state is always the same, this
does not hold in multi-tasks. In order to describe a state in our case, we first define
how we embed the objects into vectors. At any given time step, each object i ∈ N
is uniquely associated to a vector. Each vector is of the form ti = [pi , wi , qi , x̄i , u],
where x̄i is a binary parameter assuming value zero when object i has already been
selected or cannot be selected due to the capacity constraint (2) and one otherwise,
and u is the residual capacity of the knapsack (i.e., W minus the weights of the
already selected objects).
We name the selection of an object an action. Actions (A) are chosen based on
the Q-value of each object (see Sect. 2.1.1). The algorithm that determines the Q-
values is called the agent (see Sect. 2.2). In RL, a state represents the available
information about the process at a given moment. We represent the observation of
a state by the matrix obtained stacking all the |N| object vectors together. Given
a non-final state, the agent has to select an action; however, not all objects can
be chosen in any state. While choosing an action, the non-selectable objects are
momentarily removed, which is called masking. In our case, generic action (object)
i is masked when x̄i equals zero. The initial state has u = W and x̄i = 1 for all
i ∈ N, while we define a state as final if x̄i = 0 for all i ∈ N. Our algorithm
sequentially selects objects until no additional object can be selected, in which case
the algorithm terminates.
Given a state, each action leads to a new state and a reward. In our case, the
reward r of choosing object i ∈ N is the profit of the chosen object (i.e. r = pi
when choosing object i ∈ N). The series of states in between an initial and a final
state is called an episode. The final objective of an RL algorithm is to maximize the
(discounted) cumulative reward observed in an episode. In general, we discount the
future reward to avoid problems arising with very long or non-finishing episodes.
In our case, episodes are relatively short and they always terminate (worst case
6 J. Pierotti et al.

Table 1 Summary of the definitions needed for our reinforcement learning framework
Name Definition
Task An instance of the KP
Multi-task RL RL algorithm to solve a family of tasks (virtually any
KP problem in our case)
Action The selection of an object
State The available information (profits, weights, which objects have
been selected and which have not,..) at a given time moment
Initial state State where no objects have been selected yet
Final state State where no more objects can been selected
Episode Series of visited states from the initial state to the final state
Masking The removal of the unselectable actions
Reward The profit of the selected object
Transition A sequence of an old state, a chosen action, an observed
reward, and a new state
Minibatch A set of non-consecutive1 transitions
Training distribution Distribution from which we draw the instances to train
the algorithm

scenario, they terminate in |N| steps); so, there is no need to discount the future
rewards. We call the sequence of old state s, chosen action a, observed reward r,
and new state s  a transition. A set (of fixed size, in our case) of non-consecutive1
transitions is called a minibatch. The transitions in the minibatches are used to
compute the loss (which is needed in order to learn) in the learning step (Sect. 2.1.2).
Finally, we train and evaluate the algorithm by solving randomly drawn tasks from
the so called training distribution. Table 1 summarizes the introduced definitions.

2.1.1 Double Q-Learning

Our RL algorithm falls under the general umbrella of Q-learning [18]. Given a
state s, and a set of possible actions A, the idea of Q-learning is to estimate
the expected future cumulative rewards for each possible action (called Q-values
Q(s, a), ∀a ∈ A) and select one action based on an exploration/exploitation
strategy. On one hand, exploration is fundamental to search the state-action space.
In fact, in (non-deep) Q-learning, if one could explore for an infinite amount of
time, the optimal Q-values would be retrieved. On the other hand, the agent should
concentrate more on promising actions to improve convergence to an optimal policy.
As exploration/exploitation strategy, we use -greedy, which greedily chooses the
best action (i.e. the action with the highest Q-value) with probability 1- or a random
action with probability . Often the Q-learning algorithm can be too optimistic while

1 Transitions do not have to be consecutive, but, by chance, they could be.

Reinforcement Learning for the Knapsack Problem 7

estimating the Q-values. One common solution to this problem is to adopt double
Q-learning [7]. In deep RL, double Q-learning is enforced by having two identically
structured neural networks. The current network is used to select the best action at
the next state while the other one (called the target network) is used to compute
the Q-value of the next state. In this work, we use a similar method which helps
stabilizing our results. The difference being that the Q-values are always computed
via the current network and the target network is used to determine the action.
Naming Q the function to compute the Q-values associated with the target network,
our revised Bellman equation becomes (see also Sect. 2.1.2):

Q(s, a) = r(s, a) + Q(s  , arg max(Q (s  , a))). (4)

a

Equation (4) is needed in the learning step (see Sect. 2.1.2), where the parameters
of the Q function are tuned in such a way that the distance between Q(s, a) and
r(s, a) + Q (s  , arg maxa (Q(s  , a))) is minimized.

2.1.2 Learning Strategy

Our algorithm works by generating and solving new tasks of different dimensions
(i.e. |N| is not a constant between two different tasks). Let us assume that we train
our algorithm to solve instances of k different sizes. Every time a new instance
is generated and solved, all the transitions are stored in a replay buffer [20]. Our
algorithm has k different fixed-size replay buffers (one for each possible dimension
of |N|) where transitions are stored with a FIFO (first in first out) strategy. A FIFO
policy guarantees that the algorithm always keeps in memory the newest generated
information. Transitions of instances with the same dimensions are stored in the
same buffer. When a minibatch is needed, we randomly choose one of the k replay
buffers and extract a minibatch from there. Given the multiple replay buffers, each
state in the minibatch has the same dimension and, thus, can be stack together,
easing the computation. It is important to note that different tasks have different
gradient magnitude: a task with 100 objects is likely to have a different gradient
than a task with 2 objects. In fact, we are using a NN to approximate the Q-values
and, reasonably, the approximation becomes more and more difficult (thus less
and less accurate) with an increasing number of objects. A less accurate Q-value
approximation would likely lead to greater gradient magnitudes; thus, different
tasks present different gradient magnitude. However, since each time we choose the
replay buffer uniformly at random, we are averaging the gradients; thus, we are not
introducing any bias. When the algorithm has accumulated enough transitions in the
replay buffers, it begins to learn. We do so by selecting, uniformly at random, from
one random replay buffer, t transitions (or all the transitions if less than t transitions
are present in that replay buffer). Transitions which have never been selected before
8 J. Pierotti et al.

have priority over transitions that were. We call these t transitions a minibatch. For
generic transition i (si , ai , ri , si ) in the minibatch, we compute the loss as:
  2
lossi = Q(si , ai ) − ri + Q(si , arg max(Q (si , a)) (5)
a

Then, we backpropagate the average of the t losses. Sometimes, the loss function
is so steep that blindly following its gradient would lead outside of the region where
the gradient is meaningful. To prevent this, we clip the gradient [19] to a maximum
length of 0.1. The parameters of the agent are updated via the RMSprop method2
[5]. Finally, the target network is updated via a soft-update [6], i.e., naming p any
generic parameter of the agent, pt its corresponding one in the target network and τ
(constant equal to 0.05 in our case) the soft-update parameter: pt ← (1−τ )pt +τp.

2.2 The Agent

The agent receives the observations of the states and outputs the Q-values. It is
composed by three main blocks, all using ReLU as activation function. The first
and last block are composed of two fully connected linear layers of dimension 512
each. The first block enlarges the feature space of each object vector from five to
512 and the last block reduces the features to one (the Q-value). The second block
is a transformer (Sect. 2.2.1). In most CO problems, there is no clear ordered object
structure. Even if we introduce an arbitrary order, the problem would be permutation
invariant. In the KP, a permutation of the elements would neither change the optimal
solution of the problem nor its structure. For this reason, we decide to base our
agent on self-attention, which is permutation invariant (unlike CNNs or RNNs).
While most agents for end-to-end approaches involve CNNs and/or RNNs [11], we
conjecture that, for the KP and other CO problems, the effectiveness of an algorithm
does not lie within those structures. In fact, CNNs are an excellent tool to extract
local features [12], but they are only useful when there is a clear ordered object
structure (such as pixels in an image). RNNs sequentially embed a sequence of
inputs, where each output depends also on the sequence of previous inputs. This
is very useful when states are partially observable [4]; however, the KP satisfies
the Markov property, i.e., the distribution of future states depends only on the
current state. This memoryless property makes the problem Markovian. Thus, given
the Markovian property of our problem and the absence of an underlying ordered
structure, we decide to base our implementation on a variation of the transformer
[16] without CNNs or RNNs. The transformer accepts as input a variable-length
(dt ) tuple of objects (where all objects have the same dimension do ) and returns
a tuple of same length and dimension (do for each single output, dt for the whole

2 http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~tijmen/csc321/slides/lecture_slides_lec6.pdf.
Reinforcement Learning for the Knapsack Problem 9

tuple). It is composed by a series of multi-head attention mechanisms in a layer

structure (see Sect. 2.2.1). Attention is a powerful mechanism that allows to look at
the input and generate a context vector based on how much each part of the input
is relevant for the output. Doing so, the algorithm learns to isolate from a set of
features the one(s) relevant for that particular state.

2.2.1 Self-Attention, Multi-Head, and Multi-Layer Transformer

Self-attention is a powerful ML technique that takes a set of objects and returns

an equally sized set of vectors. In our case, the objects taken as input are
matrices, called queries Q, keys K, and values V , which are three different linear
transformations of the object vectors of size dq , dn , and dn , respectively. Self-
attention is a function that measures the similarity of queries and keys with a dot
product; then, a softmax of that similarity is used to weight the values in a linear
combination. So, naming W Q , W K , and W V the matrices of learnable parameters
for the linear transformations and S̄ ∈ Rn×dn the embedded state observation (i.e.,
the matrix obtained by stacking the object vectors of dimension 512), we obtain:
   
QK  (S̄W Q )(S̄W K )
Attention(Q, K, V ) = softmax √ V = softmax √ (S̄W V ).
dn dn

Instead of a single self-attention mechanism on vectors of dimension dn , [16]

discovered that it was beneficial to linearly project the queries, keys, and values h
times (called a head; hence, multi-head) with different, learned linear projections
dn
on a smaller dimension of size dv = . The outputs are computed in parallel,
h
concatenated, and reprojected once again (via a learnable matrix W 0 ). Formally,
this becomes:

MultiHead(S̄) = [head1, · · · , headh ]W 0 ,

where headi = Attention(S̄WiQ , S̄WiK , S̄WiV ) and WiQ , WiK , WiV are all learnable
matrices for all i ∈ [1, . . . , h]. This multi-head self-attention mechanism is repeated
for L layers. Each layer is composed of two units which both produce outputs of the
same dimension as their input, i.e., dn . The first unit is indeed the multi-head self-
attention mechanism, the second unit is a fully connected feed-forward network with
ReLUs. Both these units adopt also a residual connection and a layer normalization
[1]. The residual connection was proven to facilitate learning [8].
10 J. Pierotti et al.

2.3 Model Architecture

In each instance, all objects are normalized such that the maximum profit and weight
is one. The agent has a two layer fully connected neural network to expand the 5
features of a vector into 512 features. The resulting vector is fed to a transformer
encoder3 with six layers and eight heads per layer. Normalization is applied after
each layer. After the transformer, another two fully connected neural network layers
are used to reduce the 512 features to a single one (the Q-value associated with
the action of selecting the corresponding object). The learning rate of the optimizer
is set to 10−6 and  linearly decreases with the episode number from one to 0.05.
Each replay buffer can store up to a maximum of 105 transitions, the minibatch size
is set to 512, and the soft update parameter τ is set to 0.05. The overall structure
of the algorithm is given in Algorithm 1. For a total of 105 times, the algorithm
generates and solves one instance. Its transitions are saved in the replay buffer and
the algorithm takes a learning step. In order to partially fill the replay buffers,
the algorithm starts to learn only after the 512th iteration. During the training,
ten equally spaced greedy test evaluations over one hundred randomly generated
instances are conducted in order to assess the algorithm progress.

Algorithm 1: RL algorithm overview

1: for i = 0, · · · , 105 do
2: task ← generate new task
3: transitions ← solve the task with an -greedy policy
4: store transitions in replay buffer
5: if i ≥ 512 then
6: learning step
7: if i mod 104 = 0 then
8: evaluate the algorithm with a greedy policy

3 Computational Results

Two different training distributions are used to generate the tasks. In the first
distribution, |N| is chosen uniformly at random between 2 and 100 every time
a new instance is generated. Moreover, the profit and weight of each object are
also chosen uniformly at random in the closed interval [10−6, 1]. A lower bound
of 10−6 is enforced to avoid numerical errors. We call this distribution random.

3 For details see https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/generated/torch.nn.TransformerEncoder.html.

Many optional parameters were set to the default values, such as the feedforward dimension was
set to 512 and the probability of dropout to 0.1.
Reinforcement Learning for the Knapsack Problem 11

The second distribution (named Pisinger) are some of the small, large, and hard
instances taken from [13]. These Pisinger instances were generated in order to be
difficult to be solved via a MILP solver. These small, large, and hard instances are
further subdivided in six, six, and five groups, respectively. From these groups, we
select instances with 20, 50, and 100 objects. Each pair group-number of objects
contains one hundred instances, for a total of 3200 instances (because not all groups
have the 20 objects instances).
We train our algorithm twice from scratch, thus obtaining two different versions
of the same model. We train the first version exclusively on the random instances
while we train the second one exclusively on the Pisinger instances. We evaluate the
trained algorithms both on random instances and on Pisinger’s. When evaluating
and testing, we compare our results with the simple heuristic (see Sect. 2) which
achieves, on average, 99% of the optimal solution’s value (hence, it is a good
measure for comparison). In Figs. 1 and 2, every result is normalized with respect to

(a) (b)
1.0 1.0

0.8 0.8

0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4

0.2 normalized cumulave simple heurisc rewards

0.2 normalized cumulave simple heurisc rewards
normalized cumulave RL rewards normalized cumulave RL rewards
0.0 0.0
0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Fig. 1 During training evaluation on 100 random instances. On the x-axis, the number of iterations
and on the y-axis, the averaged normalized cumulative reward are shown. The blue dots indicate
the average cumulative reward, the vertical lines indicate the standard deviation. (a) Training on
the random distribution. (b) Training on the Pisinger distribution

(a) (b)
0.6 RL RL
simple heurisc 0.14 simple heurisc
0.5 0.12
0.4 0.10
0.08
0.3
0.06
0.2
0.04
0.1 0.02
0.0 0.00
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5

Fig. 2 Evaluation on the hard, 100 objects Pisinger instances. Green lines for the RL and purple
lines for the simple heuristic. On the x-axis, different groups of instances, on the y-axis, the gaps
to optimality are displayed. Please note the different scale of the y-axis. (a) Training on random
distribution. (b) Training on Pisinger distribution
12 J. Pierotti et al.

the optimal solutions (in the Pisinger distribution) or with respect to the heuristic
solution. Figure 1 displays the evaluations of the algorithm during training on
one hundred random instances. For the sake of brevity, we report only the most
meaningful results, i.e., the hard Pisinger instances with one hundred objects.
Figure 2a shows the boxplot of the gap to the optimal solution for the hard Pisinger
instances of the algorithm trained on the random distribution. Although the results
are overall satisfactory, the algorithm trained on random instances performs badly
on some types of Pisinger instances. The most likely reason is that the algorithm
trained on random instances has an extremely small probability of seeing some
Pisinger instances (which have been handcrafted), thus it does not generalize over
those particularly complex instances. On the other hand, when the algorithm is
evaluated on randomly generated instances (Fig. 1a), results are very close to
the heuristic solution, thus, to the optimal solution. Figure 2b displays the same
gap for the algorithm trained on the Pisinger distribution. In this case, results are
very satisfactory since the algorithm consistently achieves near-optimal solutions.
Also while evaluating on randomly generated instances (Fig. 1b), results are very
close to the heuristic solution, thus to the optimal solution; however, results are
slightly worse than the results obtained by the algorithm trained on the random
distribution. As expected, we conclude that training the algorithm on randomly
generated instances boosts performance in the average case, but it is less effective
to complex instances, while training the algorithm on the Pisinger distribution
performs (slightly) worse on the average case, but is much more robust (both on
the random and on the complex Pisinger instances).

4 Conclusion

In this work, we introduced a deep Q-learning framework with a transformer as

the main deep architecture for the KP problem. The algorithm achieves results very
close to optimality within a split second on instances up to one hundred objects.
These results are promising; however, in the KP, also a simple conventional heuristic
returns very solid results. Nonetheless, our results suggests that “attention is all you
need” may also hold in end-to-end methods for CO problems. Future research will
explore a transformer-based RL method on other CO problems where conventional
heuristics fail to give good solutions in a short amount of time. Moreover, our
algorithm computes the Q-values which are difficult quantities to estimate. Instead,
one could aim to learn directly the policy with whom to take actions (i.e. the
probability distribution of the actions for a given state). This policy could be learned
by firstly using behavioural cloning [15] (to imitate the heuristic), and secondly RL,
to explore more possible state-action combinations.

Acknowledgments This research was supported in part by Ahold Delhaize. All content represents
the opinion of the author(s), which is not necessarily shared or endorsed by their respective
employers and/or sponsors.
Reinforcement Learning for the Knapsack Problem 13

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Potential Sales Estimates of a New Store

Jacopo Tozzi and Francesco Guarino

Abstract This work describes a real use cases of a Machine Learning (ML)
application in the business context.
The use case concerns the estimation of the potential of new Point of Sale (PoS),
where for potential we mean the sales volumes from the second year with respect to
the opening date of the contract. For this project, both a Gradient Boosting model
and a Convolutional Neural Network, are used together.
The aim is to support the sales managers engaging new PoS with an automatic
tool, which in each year’s quarter examines all the Italian active commercial
activities and returns the most promising ones.

Keywords Machine learning · Convolutional neural network · Gradient boosting

machine

1 Introduction and Problem Definition

To define a Point of Sale (PoS) potential, we introduce first the concept of expected
value. The PoS sales expected value is defined as the yearly average sales of a
group of similar PoS which have certain common features (walkability, population,
position, etc.).
Once we identify the variables conditioning the PoS sales, we can use them to
cluster the entire PoS network. Each cluster is then characterized by PoS groups with
very similar features. It is reasonable to think the sales variation within the cluster
as the inner sales skill of the seller. It turns out that the potential can be defined as
the sales volume of a PoS in the case the seller has very good selling skills in the
same neighbourhood’s condition of other PoS.

J. Tozzi () · F. Guarino

IGT, Rome, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 15

A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_2
16 J. Tozzi and F. Guarino

A review of clustering literature is out of the scope of this work, therefore

the interested reader is addressed to [1–5] for some of the most recent works on
clustering methods and applications.
Formally, for each PoS, the reachable potential is specified as the sales 90th
percentile within the same belonging cluster.
We choose the 90th percentile and not the maximum in order to not assign an
unrealistic potential to a PoS, which might be due to peculiar and not replicable
conditions. In other words, we do not want to assign an outlier as potential sales to
a PoS.
The work is structured as follows: Sect. 2 is devoted to present the used databases
and features; Sect. 3 details the machine learning (ML) techniques at the basis of
the proposed approach; Sect. 4 is related to computational results; finally, Sect. 5
provides the conclusions

2 Geospatial DB Creation and Geospatial Features

As we said in the earlier paragraph, to define similar PoS and identify the variables
which most contribute to the sales, we need to describe the area and the demography
in the proximity of a PoS. For this reason, we created a geospatial database where
we store the coordinates of all Italian activities and points of interest (POI) as
underground stops, fuel stations, etc.

2.1 The Geospatial Database

We can essentially group the data into three categories:

• Economic activities: in our commercial activities database we have more than six
million of activities on all the Italian soil as for example restaurants, factories,
stores, etc. With this information we can describe the economic area in the
proximity of a PoS.
• Open street map (OSM) [6]: this data is available in a public database, where
users are free to localize any POI. In this way we can consider all the proximity
POIs.
• ISTAT data [7]: this database is given by the official Italian Statistical Institute,
in which we can find all the demographic features as age, instruction level or
average income. The granularity is the census section, which is the lowest census
unit. This allows us to explain the demographic area in the proximity of a PoS.
Potential Sales Estimates of a New Store 17

2.2 The Geospatial Features

To describe a new PoS area, we need first its geographic coordinates. Once we
localize the PoS, the goal is to understand the peculiarities of the proximity area.
We define two ranges within two radii of 750 m (meter) and 1500 m respectively
(Fig. 1). The former is used to depict the nearest features of the PoS, while the
second to evaluate the greater area around the immediate PoS proximity. In Table 1
there is a summary of all the variables involved.
For the training we use 20,000 PoS opened in the last years and for each PoS we
have associated the features described previously. The activities and POI localized
are about 9.7 million. To identify the proximity features we should compute 194
billion distances, so we adopt another strategy.

Fig. 1 Example of two radii applied to a potential PoS

Table 1 Table of the explained variables grouped by the three macrocategories

Economic activities Open Street Map ISTAT data
Bars and restaurants Fuel stations Total population in 1500 m
Commercial activities Underground and bus stops Working age population
Entertainment activities Tourism attractions Employment rate
Human services activities Bathhouses Unemployment rate
Sales of existing PoS Places of worship Number of nearest sections
Sales and distance of nearest PoS Amenities (schools, parks) Distance of the nearest section
Average income PoS latitude and longitude Total city population
18 J. Tozzi and F. Guarino

We choose the Haversine distance between two points which consider the Earth
curvature in the calculation. Since we must compute the distances from commercial
activities and POIs within a maximum area of 1500 m of radius centred on the
potential PoS, we implement a strategy which allows us to calculate a considerably
smaller number of distances.
The idea is to use n centres C1 , C2 , . . . , Cn (not necessarily PoS), where
n 9.7 million, on which compute the distances. At this point we must associate
at each PoS its nearest centre. We compute only the distances between the PoS and
all activities and POI at a distance from the centre less or equal than:

D ∗ = d (P oS, Ci ) + 1500 m (1)

In this way we calculate all the distances less or equal of 1500 m from the PoS,
excluding the majority a priori. The consequent number of distances depends on
two factors: the number and position of centres.
For what concerns the number of centres, we need to balance two effects.
Specifically, increasing the number of centres, the average distance D∗ decreases,
consequently there are less distances for activities and POI to compute. On the other
side, as the number of centres grows the server memory is closer to its saturation
as the number of distances in storage is dim(C) ∗ TotPOI , where TotPOI is the total
number of activities and POI.
The optimal number of centres found is 8, as one can see in Table 2. In this
way we are able to balance the memory usage, the lower number of distances to
compute and the computation time. If we add too many centres, the cons, in terms
of computation time, are higher than pros.
To choose the best position for each centre we used the clustering algorithm K-
means on all the 9.7 million activities and POI coordinates. The idea is that the best
positioning of the centres is given by the density of the activities and POI. Thus, the
average distance D∗ becomes smaller.

Table 2 Results of different configurations in centres calculation. The best number of centres is
equal to 8, where there is a good balance between memory storage and computation time
4 centres 8 centres 10 centres 12 centres
Size [GB] 1.8 3.6 4.56 5.38
Computation time [min] 138 95 115 143
Potential Sales Estimates of a New Store 19

3 Proposed Machine Learning (ML) Based Approach

Machine learning techniques are largely used to extract information from large sets
and then transforming the information into a comprehensible and compact structure
for further use, at the basis of decision support tools dealing with complex decision
problems, as shown in [8–11].
The objective is to estimate the PoS sales potential through a model trained
over 20,000 PoS already active on the Italian soil. For each PoS we build all
proximity variables described previously when the contract has been stipulated with
the company. The target variable assigned is the sales volume at the second year
from the contract beginning.
To maximize the predictions accuracy, we decide to use, alongside the proximity
features, the satellite pictures of the areas around the potential PoS. We take the
pictures through the Google “maps static” API [12].
Due to the different nature of data for what concerns the satellite pictures, we
implement two different models, one stacked with the other, for the two different
datasets. The proximity features have been treated as input for a Gradient Boosting
Machine (GBM) while the pictures as input of a Convolutional Neural Network
(CNN).

3.1 CNN and Satellite Pictures

Specifically, we implement the CNN to create the image embedding in a one-

dimension vector, which in turn we concatenate with the proximity features of the
Gradient Boosting.
The idea is to exploit the CNN last trained layer as the embedded image vector,
where the input is the satellite picture and the target variable the PoS sales. In this
way the last layer before the regression neuron will emphasize the most relevant
picture features for the sales volumes.
In Fig. 2 we represent the CNN and GBM structures. In Fig. 3 we can see the
architecture implemented to store the image requested to Google maps static API.
We run a batch job in our Big Data Application which sends 20,000 requests to
the API which in turn responds with the relative pictures stored in our Hadoop
infrastructure.
The Convolutional Neural Network is trained using the satellite images as input
and the store sales as the target variable.
The aim is to exploit the last dense layer of the trained network to create new
features for the meta model. The idea is to construct dense features based on the
image patterns and guided by the store sales. The model is built on a pre-trained
CCN (InceptionResNetV2) available in Keras library [13]. The pre-trained weights
are obtained using the Imagenet dataset [14].
20 J. Tozzi and F. Guarino

Fig. 2 CNN and GBM models architecture

The pictures size shape is (300, 300, 3), where the first two dimensions indicate
the number of pixels while the third one the image channels.
We use the transfer learning technique in four different configurations in the
final layers summarised in Table 3. The best result in terms of R2 (8.5%) has been
achieved with one last layer of 128 neurons with Relu as the activation function.
Moreover, when we implement two final layers, we adopt a middle dropout layer.
The dropout rate is equal to 35%. We choose to maximize this metric to understand
how much influence the pictures features have on the sales volumes. The R2 is
consistent with the results of CNN applied to the house price challenge [15]. We
Potential Sales Estimates of a New Store 21

Fig. 3 Google API flow for the satellite pictures collection

Table 3 Results of the different CNN configurations

1-Layer, 16 2-Layer, 16 1-Layer, 128 2-Layer, 128
R2 5.3% 3.5% 8.5% 6.2%
Dropout 0% 35% 0% 35%

also apply a decay learning rate (Fig. 4) to train the neural network faster in the first
steps and exponentially slower as the number of steps increases.
To train the CNN a mean squared loss function has been minimized using the
Adam optimizer.

3.2 GBM for Geospatial Features Based Potential Prediction

Once the CNN is trained, we concatenate the last dense layer to the proximity
features. Thus, we can synthesize the image features and use them as input to the
gradient boosting model. The target variable is the stores sales, as in the CNN model.
The challenge of this use case is related to the highly unbalanced target
distribution (the mean is much greater than the median). To tackle the problem,
we minimize the following quantity [16]:

E{α|Y − f (X)|I (Y > f (X)) + (1 − α)|Y − f (X)|I (Y ≤ f (X))} (2)

Y is the target variable vector, X is the vector of real predictor variables and f is the
fitting function. I (Y ≤ f (X)) and I (Y > f (X)) are mutually exclusive indicator
variables. The number α is a symmetry factor between 0 and 1, which is used to
22 J. Tozzi and F. Guarino

Decaying learning rate

0.010

0.008

0.006
lr

0.004

0.002

0.000

0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000 140000

step

Fig. 4 Plot of the learning rate strategy used in the CNN training

underestimates by α and overestimates by 1 − α. In general, the function f is the

quantile of Y .
In our case the best results in terms of R2 are obtained with α = 0.5 which
denotes a symmetric underestimating and overestimating in the response. In this
case the function f is the median of Y in the tree terminal node.

4 Results of the Proposed ML Approach

After a tenfold cross validation with the caret library [17], an R software package
[18], we trained a gradient boosting model with 1800 trees, a shrinkage of 0.002, an
interaction depth of 5 and 50 as minimum number of observations in the terminal
nodes of the trees.
The best R2 is 52% and we have a MAPE of 0.6. In Fig. 5 we can see the plot
of the predicted versus real sales, where we decide to obscure the values on the axis
for privacy reasons. For higher values, except for some outliers, the predicted values
are more distributed along the bisector.
However, the model is not able to predict values too high, penalising the fewer
PoS which perform better. For lower values, we can see that the model basically
overestimates the real sales. This is exactly the hard part of this use-case, in which
the endogenous variables play a critical role.
Potential Sales Estimates of a New Store 23

Predicted sales

Real sales

Fig. 5 Plot of predicted versus real sales

5 Conclusions

This use case shows several characteristics that make the analysis challenging. The
R2 obtained indicates that all exogenous variables used explain the 52% of the
yearly sales variance. The endogenous variables have still a crucial part in the sales
contribution.
A solution might be trying to extract more variables from PoS marketing surveys,
which could be good candidates to model the problem endogeneity. We are confident
that a good set of surveys variables can improve the R2 of a certain amount. The
endogeneity of the problem would probably continue to take a conspicuous part of
the target explanation, but we might reduce its impact in the predictions’ accuracy.
The CCN can be improved by training all the weights of a smaller and
simpler custom neural network. We used the transfer learning technique because
of infrastructure issues, which we count to solve in short times.

References

1. Ahmed, M., Seraj, R., Islam, S.M.S.: The k-means algorithm: a comprehensive survey and
performance evaluation. Electronics. 9, 1295 (2020)
2. Fortunato, S., Hric, D.: Community detection in networks: a user guide. Phys. Rep. 659, 1–44
(2016)
3. Yang, Y., Wang, H.: Multi-view clustering: a survey. Big Data Min. Anal. 1(2), 83–107 (2018)
24 J. Tozzi and F. Guarino

4. Masone, A., Sforza, A., Sterle, C., Vasilyev, I.: A graph clustering based decomposition
approach for large scale p-median problems. Int. J. Artif. Intell. 13, 229–242 (2018)
5. Masone, A., Sterle, C., Vasilyev, I., Ushakov, A.: A three-stage p-median based exact method
for the optimal diversity management problem. Networks. 74, 174–189 (2019)
6. OpenStreetMap contributors. Taken from https://www.openstreetmap.org (2017)
7. ISTAT. Taken from https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/104317 (2011)
8. Olafsson, S., Li, X., Wu, S.: Operations research and data mining. Eur. J. Oper. Res. 187(3),
1429–1448 (2008)
9. Meisel, S., Mattfeld, D.: Synergies of operations research and data mining. Eur. J. Oper. Res.
206(1), 1–10 (2010)
10. Boccia, M., Sforza, A., Sterle, C.: Simple pattern minimality problems: integer linear program-
ming formulations and covering-based heuristic solving approaches. INFORMS J. Comput.
32(4), 1049–1060 (2020)
11. Boccia, M., Masone, A., Sforza, A., Sterle, C.: A partitioning based heuristic for a variant
of the simple pattern minimality problem. In: International Conference on Optimization and
Decision Science, pp. 93–102. Springer, Cham, September 2017
12. Google Inc. Maps static API. Taken from https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/
maps-static/overview (2021)
13. Chollet, F., et al.: keras. Taken from https://keras.io (2015)
14. Deng, J., Dong, W., Socher, R., Li, L.-J., Li, K., Fei-Fei, L.: Imagenet: a large-scale hierarchical
image database. In: 2009 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp.
248–255 (2009)
15. Law, S., Paige, B., Russell, C.: Take a look around: using street view and satellite images to
estimate house prices. arXiv. (2019). https://doi.org/10.1145/3342240
16. Kriegler, B., Berk, R.: Small area estimation of the homeless in Los Angeles, an application of
cost-sensitive stochastic gradient boosting. Ann. Appl. Stat. 4, 1234–1255 (2010)
17. Kuhn, M.: Building predictive models in R using the caret package. J. Stat. Software. 28(5),
1–26 (2008)
18. R Core Team. R: a language and environment for statistical computing. Tratto da. http://
www.R-project.org/ (2020)
Sells Optimization Through Product
Rotation

Jacopo Tozzi and Francesco Guarino

Abstract This article describes a real use cases of applications of Machine

Learning (ML) and Optimization techniques in the business context.
Following the business requests, the Proofs of Concept were developed first and
then put into production, rethinking the existing processes and integrating the role
of these algorithms in the decision-making processes.
The use case goal is to maximize the overall revenues through the rotation of
Vending Machines (VMs) within a network of points of sale (PoS), the VMs sell
different products. A new product in a PoS brings a revenue increase in the first
weeks. To estimate the expected revenue in the new PoS, in the first n weeks, for all
combination of VMs exchange, two ML models have been used.
After the revenue’s calculation for all possible exchange, to choose the optimal
transfer chain and respect the business constraints, an optimization model has
been used. The optimization model has been formulated as a goods transportation
problem, where each node (VM position) on the network can be a source or
destination node.

Keywords Machine learning · Advanced analytics · Transportation problem

1 Introduction and Problem Description

The company goal is to maximize the vending machines (VMs) sales volume within
the network of points of sale (PoS), each VM delivers only one type of product.
The business evidence is that as the number of days that the VM remains in the
store increases, (and therefore of the same product), sales decrease.

J. Tozzi () · F. Guarino

IGT, Rome, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 25

A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_3
26 J. Tozzi and F. Guarino

A “novelty effect” is assumed within the store, which leads the customer having
a greater propensity to purchase the product in the first period of exposure in the
PoS.
An initial approach of increasing sales through the rotation of VMs is already
carried out by the manager of the physical machine. From the analysis of the data,
is possible to see an actual increase in sales volumes in the first n days, the data of
all past rotations will be used for training the ML model.
The goal is to create an automated tool that advises managers on optimal
rotations, which maximize product sales.
This tool must also provide constraints on movements, for example, from a PoS
it cannot be moved more than half of the machines or a maximum of X movements
can be carried out.
The first step is to quantify the increase in sales (or the loss in case of still) and
analyse the duration of the novelty effect on the PoS.
Assuming not all products suffer the same decline, it has been decided to analyse
different curves, each corresponding to a producer (each producer makes products
that are very similar to each other). In the data the confirmation of the different
effects has been found. In Fig. 1 are three graphs, each belonging to the products of
a single producer:

Fig. 1 Sales producer in case of still VMs

Sells Optimization Through Product Rotation 27

For each graph the average product sales are analysed in the following 100 days
after the rotation, the averages sales have been calculated on approximately 3500
movements in the last 2 years, to mitigate any seasonal or distorting effects.
As you can see from the graphs, for the different manufacturers, there are
different effects. On one hand some producers suffer a more pronounced decline
(20%), on the other hand on different producers the time series is almost stationary.
The effect of the decline in overall sales calculated on the first 100 days is about
14%.
Studying the curves in detail, a first slowdown in the decrease in sales occurs
after 35 days and in any case most of the decline is concentrated in the first 50 days.
In agreement with the business, the decision was therefore taken to make a VM
activated for rotation, after the 35th day of parking in the PoS.
The average effect of the 14% decline can give us an indication of the increase
in sales that this model can bring. In fact, in the event of the absence of estimation
errors and the “ideal” purchasing behaviour of the customer i.e.: that the customer
responds in a positive and constant way to the frequent rotation of the products, a
maximum increase in sales of 14% is expected.
Further analyses were carried out to evaluate the effects of rotations on different
types of PoS (square meters, position, other products / services inside the PoS).
The differences in the novelty effect of the product in the PoS, are not conditioned
only by the type of product / producer, but also by the characteristics of the PoS and
its geographical position.
To make a prediction of the sales of a product, moved to a new PoS, a model
is needed to consider the interaction between a multitude of variables, which is the
reason of using an ML model to make these predictions.
The model has been built to be customized by users according to their require-
ments or constraints.
First, it provides two series of main constraints, the first is the one that prohibits
the movement of VMs, within the same PoS, the second series of constraints,
prohibits the movement of a VM containing a specific product on PoS that already
has that product, as these shifts would not create the novelty effect.
In addition, there are other more operational constraints, which allow you to
configure the total number of VM movements and the maximum number of VMs
that can be moved by a single PoS. An additional component is given by adding the
calculation of the distances for the movement of VM between PoS in the objective
function. In fact, the movement of the physical machine produces logistical costs,
so by adding in the objective function a quantity that is a function of the distances
between two PoS, this will decrease the gain in relation to the distance, in the case
of the choice of the movement.
28 J. Tozzi and F. Guarino

2 Solution Approach

After the collection of data and information, it has been decided to use two ML

models: one for the prediction of sales in case of moving the VM to a new PoS P ,
(the target variable represents the sum of sales in the first 35 days after moving); the
second model will be used to estimate sales in the same 35 days, in the case that the

VM already present in P is not moved.
The difference between these two quantities represents the estimated gain from
moving the VM to the new store. In the case of a not profitable shift, the difference
between these quantities will assume negative values.
After the calculation of all the possible gains, represented by the deltas of all
the possible combinations of displacement of a VM with respect to its stationing, a
graph is created where each arc represents the displacement of VM i instead of VM
j, the weight associated with arc is equal to the estimated gain in the displacement,
therefore a VM will correspond to each vertex. The project is divided into the two
phases described below.
The phase 1 is focused on estimating the difference between the sales obtained if
the product would be moved in the new PoS (point of sales) in the first n weeks, and
the sales which the product would have guaranteed if in the next n weeks, it would
not be moved.
Identifying R as the revenue of a vending machine and ΔR as the sales difference
in case of VMs exchange, the equation (1) describes the expected revenue in case of
moving VMs:

i,j i,v∗ j,v∗

ΔRt,t +n = Rt,t +n − Rt,t +n (1)

i = i-th vending machine position, v* = PoS target, n = number of weeks

i,v∗
Rt,t +n estimation (Vending machines rotation)

• A ML model has been built (Random Forest) which estimates the product sales
in the new PoS, where the transfer is possible. For the estimation, different
information is used, as the product features and the target PoS features (see Sect.
3).
• For each possible product transfer towards a new PoS, the model calculates the
sales prediction in the next n weeks.
j,v∗
Rt,t +n estimation (Vending machines still)
• Also, for this indicator a ML model has been implemented, which uses the
historical information on the PoS sales, seasonal variables and PoS features (see
Sect. 3).
• For each product and PoS, the model calculates the prediction of sales in the case
the product is still.
i,j
ΔRt,t +n calculation
Sells Optimization Through Product Rotation 29

Fig. 2 An example of graph structure, describing a network of K PoS

i,v∗ j,v∗
• Estimation, through the same logics described before, of Rt,t +n and Rt,t +n for
the vending machines which are potentially rotated
i,j
• All the possible combinations of ΔRt,t +n are calculated.
i,v∗
In the phase 2, the ΔRt,t +n estimated, are used in an optimization model, to
select the optimal transfers net on business constraints (each PoS must have always
the same number of machines, the same product must not be already present in the
target PoS, etc.), the model structure is shown in Fig. 2.
The optimization result is, for each vending machine, the target PoS (which could
be also the starting one if the transfer is not convenient).
The model optimizes the vending machines rotations among PoS, basing on two
drivers:
• Maximize the sales after a transfer, i.e., the convenience of rotation is assured.
The maximization is estimated considering all possible swaps, for which the best
solution is feasible together with each available machine
• A series of business constraints has been considered, see constraints from (4) to
(11).
30 J. Tozzi and F. Guarino

3 Sale Prediction of VMs

To predict the sales of still VM on a point of sale, sales of approximately 15,000

VMs in a year has been considered. The target variable represents the sum of sales
in the following 35 days after the sampling date. To avoid introducing the novelty
effect within the target variable of the stationing, the initial date is randomly sampled
between the 50th day starting from the date of movement in the PoS, up to 35 days
before the next movement of the VM in another PoS.
In particular, the following variables have been used to estimate the collection of
a VM in the next 35 days, in the PoS in which it is already located:
• The sales of the last week
• The sales of the second to last week
• The sales of the third to last and fourth to last week (added together)
• Global median weekly sales
• Standard deviation of the sales
• Number of days since the VM is in the PoS
• Calendar variables (the month in which the estimate is made)
• Day of the year
• Geographic variables (latitude and longitude of the PoS)
• Holidays present in the prediction period
For the sales prediction, after some tuning, the Random Forest model has been
chosen.
The model has been trained through cross validation on approximately 12,000
VMs and tested on 3000, below are the results on the predictions.
Comparing the real values with the expected ones, the model has an average
estimation error of about 2400 A C, predicting about 76% of the variability of the
target.
In Fig. 3 there is a comparison between real values and predicted by the model.
The model for the prediction of the sales of a moved VM to a new PoS in the first
35 days after moving, has been trained on about 3000 VMs rotated in the period
considered. Only the movements of VMs containing products that are not already
present in the arrival points of sale have been evaluated. Compared to the previous
model, more information is required to estimate sales. In the previous model the
impact of the product in the store in the period before the forecast is known, in the
movement model instead it is necessary to estimate the impact of a specific product,
and its characteristics compared to the characteristics of the PoS to which it will be
moved and of the population that gravity around.
The target variable represents the sum of the sales of the product contained in the
VM in the first 35 days within the new PoS.
The forecast variables are the following:
• The variables relating to the new PoS
– Type of shop
Sells Optimization Through Product Rotation 31

Fig. 3 Example of difference between real and predicted value of VMs sales. The model R-
squared is equal to 76%, average error 2400 A
C

– Square meters
– Latitude and longitude of the store
– Average number of VMs within the PoS
– Median monthly sales of a VM
– Sales from other businesses within the PoS
– The characteristics of the population around the PoS
• The variables relating to the characteristics of the product contained in the VM
that will be moved
• Calendar variables (i.e. the month in which the exchange takes place)
• Holidays in the considered period
• Variables relating to the “saleability” of the product, for example the average
sales within all the PoS and the positioning with respect to the other products
sales.
A Random Forest model has also been used for this prediction.
The model has been tested on approximately 500 VMs moved with the aim of
predicting the harvest of the first 35 days.
Comparing the real values with the expected ones (Fig. 4), the model has an
average error of about 2600 A C going to predict about 64% of the variability of the
target variable.
32 J. Tozzi and F. Guarino

Fig. 4 On the left an example of VMs sales predicted and real sales values in the case of moved
VMs, on the right the residuals of estimation errors. The R-squared is equal to 64% and the average
prediction error is about 2600 A
C

4 Problem Formulation

After estimating the sales predictions in the case of moving or stationary VMs, the
goal is to make the optimal movements of the VMs within the PoS network, meaning
the ones that maximize the sales in the following 35 days.
The problem is thought as an optimization model on directed graph and adapted
for the modelling of the movement of goods within a network of PoS.
In the graph G(V, E) the set of vertices V represents the VMs within the network
of PoS, therefore |V| will be equal to the number of VMs considered.
The generic arc e which belongs to the set E, represents the displacement of the
VM u in v with u, v ∈ V.
Since the displacement of the VM u in the position of the VM v is not
symmetrical with respect to the exchange of u and v, a directed graph is considered.
The weight to be attributed to each arc ai, j , which corresponds to the displace-
ment of VM i in j, will be equal to the following formula:

i,j j
ΔRt,t +n = Rt,t
i
+n − Rt,t +n (2)

where R in (2) represents the estimated sales of the VM in the PoS, i = i-th vending
machine position, j = j-th vending machine position, n = number of weeks.
Since a store can contain several VMs inside it, and only VM movements to other
PoS are foreseen, a Z partition of the vertices Z1 , . . . , Zn is therefore performed,
where the generic partition Zi includes all the vertices (VM) within a PoS, with
Zi ∩ Zj = 0 ∀ i, j. The cardinality of Z will therefore be equal to the number of PoS
in the network.
A further partition of the set V is carried out according to the type of product
within the VM. A partition S of the vertices S1 , . . . , Sm has been performed, where
the generic partition Sk includes all vertices (VM) that sell the same product k, with
Sells Optimization Through Product Rotation 33

Sh ∩ Sk = 0 ∀ k, h. The cardinality of S will be equal to the number of different

products within the VMs.
The binary variable xij is a decision variable, which takes the value 1 if VM i is
moved to the position of VM j, 0 otherwise.
Considering N VMs, H products and K PoS, the optimization model is shown
below:
N
maximize Rij ∗ xij (3)
i,j =1

N
xij ≤ 1 ∀i = 1, . . . , N (4)
j =1

N N
xij = xj i ∀j = 1, . . . , N (5)
i=1 i=1

N
xij ≤ B ∀i, j = 1, . . . , N (6)
i,j =1

xij = 0 ∀h = 1, . . . , H (7)
i ∈ Sh
j ∈ Sh

xij = 0 ∀k = 1, . . . , K (8)
i ∈ Zk
j ∈ Zk
 |Zk |
xij ≤ ∀k = 1, . . . , K (9)
i ∈ Zk 2
j∈/ Zk
 xij ≤ 1 ∀k = 1, . . . , K
(10)
i ∈ Sh ∀h = 1, . . . , H
j ∈ Zk

1 if the vm i is trasnf erred in j

xij (11)
0 otherwise

S vm partition with the same products

Z vm partition in the same PoS
i,j
The Rij in the objective function correspond to the ΔRt,t +n previously calculated
as the difference of the two models’ outputs.
If the product of VM i is already in the PoS of VM j, by convention Rij = 0, as
there is no novelty effect within the PoS. Therefore, it is potentially possible to move
a product within the PoS with the same product already present, but locally it is not
convenient, it can only be in the case of a configuration that is able to maximize the
overall solution.
34 J. Tozzi and F. Guarino

The binary variable Xij is a decision variable, which takes the value 1 if VM i is
moved to the position of VM j, 0 otherwise.
Model constraints are the followings: (4) a maximum of 1 VM can be moved
from its position, (5) the flow conservation constraint, guarantees that the solution
maintains the initial configuration of the number of machines per PoS, using this
constraint, the only possible operations for the movement are the exchange between
two VMs, or a circular exchange chain, (6) this constraint assures us that a maximum
of B exchanges are possible on the PoS network, (7) VMs containing the same
product cannot be swapped, (8) exchanges in the same PoS are not allowed, (9)
a maximum of half of the VM present in a PoS can be moved (configurable
parameter), (10) more than one product of the same type cannot be moved to a
new PoS.
To consider the distances between the movements of VM between PoS and
penalize the movements between two far PoS, it is possible to modify the objective
function (3) in the following way:
N  
maximize Rij ∗ xij − α ∗ Dij ∗ xij (12)
i,j =1

Dij are the distances between two VMs, by setting the parameter α it is possible to
increase or decrease the penalty on the moving distances.
In the following results (12) is used as maximization function.
A review of routing problems is out of the scope of this work, therefore the
interested reader is addressed to [1–4] for some of the most recent surveys and
applications.

5 Computational Results

The data used for training the ML models and the optimization model are collected
in HDFS [5], the distributed file system in the Big data architecture.
A first processing is carried out through Spark, running the ETL (extract,
transform, load) processes on millions of records, to process the aggregates that
will be input to the models listed above.
Machine learning models (Random Forest) have been trained using R software
[6], the package caret [7] has been used. The optimization model has also been
implemented through R, for the construction of the constraints and the objective
function the package ompr [8] has been used, as the solver instead the package
linux Symphony [9], which can be directly called from R.
The model is run quarterly and choose the optimal movement chains, which
maximize the total revenue on the PoS network, in Fig. 5 there is an example of
the optimal exchange chains suggested by the model.
Table 1 is an example of a model run, on a sub-sample of PoS and VM.
Sells Optimization Through Product Rotation 35

Fig. 5 Model’s run example on 6 PoS (different shapes) and 18 VMs

Table 1 Input parameters Number of PoS 50

and output results of a run
Number of VM 199
example
Number of different products 53
Alpha (α) 30
Sales increase to 35 days 267,183
Number of VM moved 91

6 Conclusions

Using this model, it is possible to optimize the handling of different products,

increasing sales on the PoS network.
It is expected that the estimated increase in sales due to the application of the
model, including estimation errors and a lower customer response to a frequent
novelty effect, is lesser then 14%, which corresponds to the novelty effect that has
been studied in the preliminary analysis on real data.
For a better estimate of the optimal movements, it will be possible to improve
the performance of the ML models, through the retraining of the models after the
suggested movements and enriching the input data with further variables.
Subsequent developments of the optimization model are possible, specifically,
the limitation of the exchange chains length, to make the model more logistically
efficient.
36 J. Tozzi and F. Guarino

To limit the exchange chain length, it is necessary to enumerate the movements in

the chain, this is possible by introducing the Subtour Elimination Constraints (STE),
which however reduce the efficiency of the model by increasing its complexity.
Other developments are possible, adding further constraints, which allow the
VMs manager to obtain flexible outputs with respect to the desired one.

References

1. Archetti, C., Speranza, M.G.: A survey on matheuristics for routing problems. EURO J. Comput.
Optim. 2, 223–246 (2014)
2. Boccia, M., Masone, A., Sforza, A., Sterle, C.: A column-and-row generation approach for the
flying sidekick travelling salesman problem. Transp. Res. Part C. 124, 102913 (2021)
3. Castillo-Salazar, J., Landa-Silva, D., Qu, R.: Workforce scheduling and routing problems:
literature survey and computational study. Ann. Oper. Res. 1–29 (2014)
4. Sinha Roy, D., Masone, A., Golden, B., Wasil, E.: Modeling and solving the intersection
inspection rural postman problem. INFORMS J. Comput. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1287/
ijoc.2020.1013
5. Apache Software Foundation. Apache Hadoop. Taken from https://hadoop.apache.org
6. R Core Team. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Taken from http://
www.R-project.org/ (2020)
7. Kuhn, M.: Building predictive models in R using the caret package. J. Stat. Software. 28(5),
1–26 (2008)
8. Schumacher, D. OMPR: R package to model mixed integer linear programs. Taken from https:/
/github.com/dirkschumacher/ompr (2020)
9. Symphony Contributors. Symphony MIP Solver. Taken from https://projects.coin-or.org/
SYMPHONY (2019)
 Part II
Healthcare
Gathering Avoiding Centralized
Pedestrian Advice Framework: An
Application for Covid-19 Outbreak
Restrictions

Veronica Dal Sasso and Valentina Morandi

Abstract Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus on everydays mobility has
been shifted from traditional means of transport to how to safely commute for
work and/or move around the neighbourhood. Maintaining the safe distance among
pedestrians becomes crucial in big pedestrian networks. Looking at personal goals,
such as walking through the shortest path, could lead to congestion phenomena
on both roads and crossroads, violating the imposed regulations. We suggest a
centralized multi-objective approach able to assign alternative fair paths for users
while maintaining the congestion level as low as possible. Computational results
show that, even considering paths that are not longer than 1% with respect to the
shortest path for each pedestrian, the congestion phenomena are reduced of more
than 50%.

Keywords Pedestrian route assignment · Gathering avoidance · Covid social

routing

1 Introduction

The steady progress towards a globalized world has, in the last decades, reduced
the impact of distances. While, in the past, people were born, grew and spent all
their lives in the same city, travelling has recently become more popular. The need
to commute to reach the workplace consistently increased. As a consequence, the
use of public and private means of transportation also increased, before the sudden
drop due to the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020. Before that, it was
common to spend a lot of time travelling, ending up in traffic jams as every car

V. Dal Sasso ()

Optrail, Rome, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]
V. Morandi
Free University of Bozen—Bolzano, Faculty of Science and Technology, Bolzano, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 39

A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_4
40 V. Dal Sasso and V. Morandi

driver tried to achieve his/her personal optimum, or being packed in overcrowded

buses or trains. Now all this appears freezed, while the focus on everyday mobility
is shifted on how to safely move around the neighborhood by foot. Walking also
replaced public transports whenever possible, as people feel safer in the open air
than in buses or metros. This means, however, that the choice of the path to walk
through is seen in a new light, because keeping social distance is crucial also in the
open air to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infections. Clearly, users tend to look at
personal goals, such as minimizing the length of their path, while being oblivious
of others’ presence. This behaviour usually is self-defeating at keeping low rates of
pedestrian congestion on the streets. On the other hand, decisions could be deferred
to a centralized entity, which has a global view of the demand and capacity on the
streets. Thus, all users could gain something in terms of experienced congestion
phenomena.
The presented methodology aims at ensuring social distancing, and hence avoid
congestion, among people walking on the city centres streets. When the walking
activity is motivated by the need of reaching a destination, most people would
choose the shortest path available. Thus, quite intuitively, the users’ satisfaction
drops fast with the increase in the length of paths. However, a small, nearly
unnoticeable, increase in walking time could avoid congestion using a centralized
approach.
Thus, the aim of this paper is to show how paths may be assigned to pedestrians,
balancing the opposing goals of minimizing the increase on the length for users and
minimizing the capacity excess on both the streets and crossroads/squares. We recall
that a path is considered eligible if it is no longer than a percentage of the shortest
path, guaranteeing fairness among users.
The problem of route assignment for pedestrians fits in the frameworks thor-
oughly described in the literature review Sect. 1.1. In Sect. 2, the gathering avoiding
pedestrian routing model is presented. In Sect. 3, the result of thorough experiments
assessing the performance of the model on real road networks is shown. Finally, in
Sect. 4, some concluding remarks and future developments are provided.

1.1 Literature Review

The centralized traffic assignment idea was already mentioned by [18], where,
speaking about vehicular traffic, the author makes the distinction between user
equilibrium and system optimum. User equilibrium is a traffic assignment in which
each user decides on its own the best route to follow. Conversely, the system
optimum is the traffic assignment in which the total travel time is minimized,
without considerations on the behaviour and fairness among users. The deterioration
of the overall solution in implementing the user equilibrium versus the system
optimum is known in literature as the price of anarchy (see [12] and [14] for
details and mathematical background). A compromise solution between these two
principles can offer interesting insights, leading to a win-win situation for all people
Gathering Avoiding Centralized Pedestrian Advice Framework: An Application. . . 41

involved. In fact, a myopic view of the problem from the perspective of the single
user can lead to choices which, once put into practise, prove to be sub-optimal. As
an example, let’s consider drivers commuting every day to and from the workplace.
Each of them is prone to choose the shortest path, in terms of distance, travelling
times or both. But, if their paths intersect, the level of congestion on the streets
will increase the travelling times, reducing the effectiveness of the user’s choice.
Even using real-time information on traffic, users’ decisions simply result in a shift
of congestion from previously congested roads to other roads. On the contrary, by
choosing a different and at first sight less favourable path, the gain for the user
may be substantial. As highlighted in [6], however, the majority of users is not
willing to act socially but instead selfishly, especially if the cost of acting socially is
high [9]. Different approaches for balancing user equilibrium and system optimum
have been investigated (see [17] and [13] for comprehensive reviews), spanning
different ways of transportation. The bounded rational user equilibrium differs from
the user equilibrium in the fact that the users are not completely free to choose their
best route. In fact, a number of paths for each user can be considered according
to the so-called indifference travel time band (i.e. a collection of paths such that,
picked one, the users would not feel the desire to change it). Details on the bounded
rational user equilibrium can be found in [11] and in [19]. On the other hand,
the constrained system optimum minimizes the total travel time trying to limit the
unfairness among users by limiting the set of eligible paths only to those that are
not longer than a small percentage with respect to the best choice. This centralized
approach inspired this work. The first attempt to formulate the constrained system
optimum, as a convex non-linear problem, can be found in [10]. For theoretical
bounds on the price of anarchy we refer to [15]. Given the difficulty of handling
non-linear latency functions, a first attempt to use a linear programming model
to solve the constrained system optimum traffic assignment problem is proposed
in [1] and later in [4]. Since the number of eligible paths is exponential, in [2]
a fast and reliable heuristic algorithm to solve big road networks is proposed. In
all presented approaches the set of eligible paths is generated a priori. Once the
flow is routed on paths, it could happen that the experienced unfairness is much
higher than the one evaluated a priori. To overcome the issue, in [5] two constrained
system optimum formulations directly controlling the real experienced unfairness
are presented. None of the presented approaches take into account the arc congestion
level as a penalty for the system objective. The first attempt to embed arc congestion
reduction techniques has been proposed in [3], where a constrained system optimum
with the aim of lowering congestion on worst congested arcs is proposed.
A different approach which can be pursued to combine user equilibrium and
system optimum is to formulate the problem as a multi-objective model. An example
in the context of Air Traffic Management can be found in [8], where the authors
assess the viability of incorporating single airlines preferences within a collaborative
European framework. The main goal of the model presented is to ensure that
air space capacity over Europe is never exceeded, while trying to accommodate
stakeholders’ requirements. Indeed, airlines request to the Air Traffic Manager
trajectories and departure times for their flights, but usually they are not willing to
42 V. Dal Sasso and V. Morandi

share which policies lead to such choices. Hence, the requests may be disguised and
may vary from one airline to the other, on the basis of the airlines’ target. In order to
adapt each airline’s demand to the global objective of reducing costs, while ensuring
the congestion level of air space sectors is below a set capacity, the model tries to
minimize the deviation from the preferred trajectories, both in terms of delays and
routing, and to minimize the total costs of traversing air sectors. The outcome of
the model is a set of Pareto optimal solutions, among which one solution may be
selected by further considerations on the fairness between the different stakeholders.

2 The Gathering Avoiding Pedestrian Routing Model

In this Section, we present the Gathering Avoiding Centralized Pedestrian Routing

problem (GA-CPR). The model assigns paths to users in order to balance two
opposing objectives, i.e. minimizing the increase in path length and minimizing the
excess in the capacity. Hence, the problem is formulated as a multi-objective model.
The fairness between users is embedded into the model by selecting as eligible paths
only those that are not too unfair for users.
In the following, we will assume that the flow of pedestrians is constant. This
allows us to neglect the time dimension of the problem and consider a static demand
on the network. As assessed by [16], this modelling choice holds when rush hour
time slots are considered.
Let G = (V , A) be a directed network, where V represents the set of vertices
and A ⊆ V × V the set of arcs. The set of arcs represents the set of roads in
the pedestrian network while the set of vertices represents the set of crossroads
between roads in set A. Each vertex h ∈ V is associated to a capacity caph
representing the number of pedestrians that can transit through the vertex without
causing gathering phenomena, and a traversing time th . Similarly, each road is
associated with a capacity capij , representing the number of pedestrians that can
walk through that road segment without gatherings, and a traversing time tij . The
requests for walking through the pedestrian area are collected and the demand of all
pedestrians going from the same origin to the same destination are consolidated in
an Origin-Destination (briefly OD). The set C represents the set of OD pairs, each
associated to an origin Oc ∈ V , a destination Dc ∈ V , and a pedestrian demand rate
dc from Oc to Dc . tcSP indicates the traversing time while walking along the shortest
path between Oc and Dc . Only paths that are similar to the shortest path in terms of
length are given as input to the model for each OD pair, as it is necessary that the
pedestrians feel that the proposed paths are among the best available. In details, we
consider as eligible only paths whose relative excess in walking time with respect to
the shortest path are within the fairness percentage φ. The set of eligible pedestrian
φ
paths from origin to destination for each OD pair c ∈ C is denoted by Kc . For each
φ
k ∈ Kc , let tck be the time needed to go across path k. The indicator parameter aijkc
Gathering Avoiding Centralized Pedestrian Advice Framework: An Application. . . 43

φ
has value 1 if path k ∈ Kc traverses arc (i, j ) ∈ A, while it has value 0 otherwise.
Details on the generating paths algorithm are discussed and provided in [1].
Variables xij represent the total pedestrian flow on arc (i, j ) ∈ A, while variables
σij represent the excess of flow with respect to arc capacity on arc (i, j ). Similarly,
variables δh indicate the excess of flow traversing a certain vertex h ∈ V and
variables zh indicate the excess of flow traversing a certain arc (i, j ) ∈ A. Moreover,
a number of variables are related to each path. Variables yck represent the pedestrian
flow of OD pair c ∈ C routed on path k ∈ Kc .
The objective functions of the GA-CPR model are denoted by
  tck
τ (φ) = yck (1)
t
φ cSP
c∈C k∈K
c
 tij  th
η(φ) = σij + δh (2)
capij caph
(i,j )∈A h∈V

Objective (1) records the total relative increase in walking time of pedestrians
on paths with respect to the shortest one. It depends on the walking time unfairness
parameter φ. Objective (2), also depending on φ, records the total relative excess of
capacity for arcs and nodes weighted by the traversing time.
The GA-CPR bi-objective model follows:

min τ (φ), η(φ) (3)


dc = yck c∈C (4)
φ
k∈Kc
 
xij = aijck yck (i, j ) ∈ A (5)
c∈C φ
k∈Kc

zh = xij h∈V (6)
(i,j )∈A|j =h

σij ≥ xij − capij (i, j ) ∈ A (7)

δh ≥ zh − caph h∈V (8)
xij ≥ 0 (i, j ) ∈ A (9)
zh ≥ 0 h∈V (10)
σij ≥ 0 (i, j ) ∈ A (11)
δh ≥ 0 h∈V (12)
yck ≥ 0 c ∈ C, k ∈ Kc . (13)
44 V. Dal Sasso and V. Morandi

Constraints (4) ensure that the pedestrian demand dc of OD pair c ∈ C is routed

φ
on paths in Kc . Constraints (5) set the flow on an arc equal to the sum of the flows
on the pedestrian paths traversing the arc. Constraints (6) set the inflow of a vertex
to be equal to the sum, among arcs entering in the vertex, of their pedestrian flows.
Constraints (7) set σij , for each arc (i, j ) ∈ A, greater or equal to the excess of flow
xij with respect to the arc capacity capij . Notice that, because of constraints (11)
and objective function (3), variable σij assumes value 0 whenever the arc capacity
is not exceeded and xij − capij , otherwise. Similarly, constraints (8) set δh greater
or equal to the excess of flow zh in vertex h ∈ V with respect to the vertex capacity
capz . Together with constraints (12) and objective function (3), variable δh assumes
value 0 if the vertex capacity is not exceeded and zh − caph , otherwise. Finally,
constraints (9)–(13) define the domain of the decision variables.

2.1 Solution Method

A number of methodologies can be used to tackle multi-objective optimization. We

will refer to [7] for a comprehensive review of such methodologies. We decided
to use the linear combination of weights as solution method since, as assessed by
[7], the main advantages of this method are its simplicity and its efficiency (from
a computational point of view). However, its main drawback is the determination
of the appropriate weight coefficients to be used in the final objective function. In
fact, the choice of weights is crucial in determining the solution. Thus, the choice
has to be made by the decision maker carefully considering the real-world problem
characteristics.
The two objective functions τ (φ) and η(φ) introduced in the previous paragraph
are weighted according to the importance parameters α and 1-α, respectively, with
α ∈ [0, 1]. The resulting objective function is:
  tck  tij  th
min α yck + (1 − α)[ σij + δh ]
t
φ cSP
capij caph
c∈C k∈K (i,j )∈A h∈V
c

.
In Sect. 3, we will also analyze the impact of the choice of α parameter on the
optimal solution. The aim is to give an overview of the impact of the two objective
functions on different policy maker choices.

3 Computational Results

A benchmark of 4 map-based instances has been used in a computational study to

assess the performance of the presented model. Instances are generated by randomly
draw coordinates for origins and destinations of pedestrian flows from four Italian
Gathering Avoiding Centralized Pedestrian Advice Framework: An Application. . . 45

cities, namely Brescia, Bolzano, Rome and Vicenza. Arc walking times are obtained
using Graphhopper and arc capacities are obtained by dividing the real distance
on map by the safety walking distance of 2m imposed by Covid-19 regulations.
Vertices’ capacity is obtained as a percentage of the entering arcs capacity and
vertices’ traversing time is obtained randomly within a short time windows. OD
pairs’ demands are generated as a percentage of the capacity of the arcs exiting the
origin. The 4 tested networks have 50 nodes with approximately 2500 arcs and 25
OD pairs, each one with a different demand. All instances can be found at: https://
valentinamorandi.it/research-outcomes/. For each instance, a traffic assignment has
been found using a restricted path set with φ values in {0.01, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2}
and α values in {1, 0.9, 0.7, 0.5, 0.3, 0.1, 0}. For each instance, we compute also the
user equilibrium (in which each passenger goes on their shortest route) as a matter
of comparison. It is obtained by setting α = 1 and φ = 0. In total, we obtain 36
traffic assignments for each instance. The model is solved using CPLEX 12.6.0 on
a Windows 64-bit computer with Intel Xeon processor E5-1650, 3.50 GHz, and 64
GB RAM. Results for the GA-CPR model are presented and discussed in Sect. 3.1.
In the following all the computed and collected statistics are defined.
• Congestion distribution
– σ̄ : average relative excess of flow with respect to the arc capacity, i.e.
1 σij
|A| capij .
(i,j )∈A
– δ̄: average relative excess of flow with respect to the node capacity, i.e.
1 δh
|V | caph .
h∈V
σ δh
– λ=0 : Percentage of arcs and nodes with capijij = 0 or cap h
= 0 w.r.t. the total
number of arcs and nodes.
σ
– λ0<...<0.25 : Percentage of arcs and nodes with 0 < capijij < 0.25 or 0 <
δh
caph < 0.25 w.r.t. the total number of arcs and nodes.
σij δh
– λ≥0.25 : Percentage of arcs and nodes with capij ≥ 0.25 or caph ≥ 0.25 w.r.t.
the total number of arcs and nodes.
• User experience for each OD pair c ∈ C
tck −tSP
– U ck = tSP : user walking unfairness with respect to fastest path for the OD
pair.
– Ū = 1
dc
yck U ck : weighted user walking unfairness.
c∈C c∈C φ
k∈Kc

• Network statistics
– T : percentage increase of total walking time with respect to user equilibrium
(UE).
– : reduction of the total walking time with exceeded capacity on arcs with
respect to UE.
– : reduction of the total walking time with exceeded capacity on nodes with
respect to UE.
46 V. Dal Sasso and V. Morandi

3.1 Performance of the Model

In this section, we summarize the results obtained. Multi-objective models are

interesting as they are able to show how contrasting goals are affected by each
other. By increasing parameters φ and α we are, respectively, assessing the impact
of loosening the constraint on users’ fairness and of focusing on the reduction of
congestion.
Quite intuitively, the walking time increases both when more importance is given
to the reduction of congestion and when longer routes are made available (see
Fig. 1). It is interesting to notice how, by just allowing a small freedom in the
increase of the paths length, there is a considerable drop in the total time spent
walking on congested nodes or arcs. Figure 2 represents exactly this: the chart on the
left shows how, by just adding those paths that are a 1% longer than the shortest path,
the reduction of walking time across congested nodes drops by 50%. There is not
much improvement, however, when longer paths are allowed. Another interesting
results is that there is not much difference when the value of α changes (except, of
course, when α = 1: when no weight is given to the congestion, there is no incentive
in diverting from the shortest path). On the right, a similar chart shows an analogous
result for the walking time on congested arcs. Notice that, in this case, the drop is
more substantial when longer paths are allowed.
Figure 3 shows how the average user unfairness, calculated as shown in the
previous section, increases when longer paths are allowed. It clearly depicts the
advantage of considering two contrasting objectives, as by varying the value of α
the unfairness can be kept under control.
Figure 4 remarks what is already shown in Fig. 1 but from another point of view.
Instead of the total walking time on congested arcs and nodes, we are looking at
the excess of flow. Congestion on nodes and arcs drops considerably when paths
just 1% longer than the shortest paths are taken into account. There is not much

Fig. 1 Increase in total walking time T , as a function of φ

Gathering Avoiding Centralized Pedestrian Advice Framework: An Application. . . 47

Fig. 2 Decrease of walking time with exceeded capacity on nodes (on the left) and on arcs
(on the right), as a function of φ

Fig. 3 Average Ū user walking unfairness, as a function of φ

Fig. 4 Average node congestion δ̄ (on the left) and arc congestion σ̄ (on the right), as a function
of φ

improvement, instead, in choosing longer paths, as expected. Figure 5 shows the

congestion on arcs and nodes at the extreme points of the dominant solutions, i.e.
the solutions of the multi-objective model obtained by setting α either 1 or 0. The
percentage of non-congested arcs and nodes (the striped region) when only the total
48 V. Dal Sasso and V. Morandi

Fig. 5 Percentage of arcs and nodes in congestion classes with α = 1 and α = 0

increase in walking time is minimized is very low, while it arises to almost 70%
when total increase in walking time is neglected and all the focus is on minimizing
congestion. As noted also above, just a small increase on the length of the allowed
paths gives a high reduction of congestion.

4 Conclusions and Future Research

In this paper we presented a multi-objective model for the Gathering Avoiding

Centralized Pedestrian Routing Problem. Its aim is to ensure pedestrians can walk
in safety according to COVID-19 regulations, which request people to social
distancing. Hence, the objectives were to minimize the total increase in time needed
by the users to reach their destinations and to minimize the exceeding of capacity
on the arcs and at nodes. Taking into account users’ fairness, the eligible paths are
chosen among the ones that do not exceed the length of the shortest path of more
than a proper percentage. Because of the contrasting nature of these objectives, the
problem is modeled as a multi-objective model.
The computational experiments were carried on by combining the two objectives
linearly. The results are promising and show that just a small increase in the length of
the paths that are taken into account can lead to a substantial reduction in congestion.
Moreover, by opportunely setting parameter α it is possible to ensure the levels of
unfairness among users is controlled.
Future researches may improve the solution method by exploring different meth-
ods for multi-objective models. Heuristic methods to handle very large instances
could be explored too.
Gathering Avoiding Centralized Pedestrian Advice Framework: An Application. . . 49

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A MILP Formulation for
the Reorganization of the Blood Supply
Chain in Italian Regions

Antonio Diglio, Andrea Mancuso, Adriano Masone, Carmela Piccolo,

and Claudio Sterle

Abstract Blood is a vital resource for human being since its unavailability may
cause deaths and complications for patients. For this reason, in the last 20 years
great interest has been addressed worldwide to the blood supply chain management,
in terms of efficient and effective policy making and system design.
In answer to this raising need, the Italian Healthcare Ministry issued a decree
aimed at improving the blood supply chain at regional level in terms of costs,
accessibility and shortage, providing also several indications and restrictions to
be accounted for. In this context, this chapter presents a mixed-integer linear pro-
gramming formulation to determine the optimal location and the number of blood
facilities at regional scale, with the aim of minimizing system costs meanwhile
guaranteeing good standard service level requirements.
The proposed formulation tackles the problem in a multi-echelon and multi-
objective perspective. It has been solved by Gurobi 9.0.1 solver and validated on
real like test cases related to Campania and Puglia regions. Finally, the impacts of
the different parameters involved in the formulation are analyzed in order to provide
managerial insights to decision makers and healthcare stakeholders.

Keywords Blood Supply Chain · Facility Location · MILP formulation ·

Multi-objective

A. Diglio · C. Piccolo
Department of Industrial Engineering (DII), Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II, Napoli,
Italy
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
A. Mancuso () · A. Masone · C. Sterle
Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (DIETI), Università degli
studi di Napoli Federico II, Napoli, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 51

A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_5
52 A. Diglio et al.

1 Introduction

Blood has several functions, including transporting oxygen and nutrients to the
lungs and tissues [1]. When extracted from the human body, it becomes a per-
ishable product that can be used for medical treatments, such as surgery, organ
transplantation, and treatments for cancer and blood disorders. No substitute of
human blood is currently available and, in many countries, blood itself is considered
a scarce resource, whose waste is unacceptable as a harbinger of postponed surgery,
untreated patients and deaths [2]. Voluntary donation is the main source of blood,
suffering from some drawbacks such as the limited number of donors, test delays
and high perishability [3]. Some blood substitutes, such as artificial blood or blood
components with in vitro stem cells, may become alternatives only in the future [4].
In this context, the blood supply chain (BSC) management is a crucial activity.
It is devoted to the management of the six main processes associated with blood
flow: collection, testing, component processing, storage, distribution, and trans-
fusion. These activities develop through five interacting levels to be opportunely
coordinated: donors, mobile collection sites (CSs), blood centers (BCs), demand
nodes (hospitals, clinics, or other transfusion points), and patients [5].
Optimal decisions making in the BSC is thus necessary to minimize the
shortages, the wastes and to design a more efficient, effective and robust system.
In Italy the BSC is managed by the Transfusion System, which is a public
body part of the Italian National Health Service (NHS) established in 1978. Unlike
other countries, the Italian BSC is fully based on voluntary and unpaid donations,
currently involving around 1.7 million donors, 1.3 million of which are periodic and
over 370,000 are occasional first donors. On average, a blood donation occurs every
10 s, which enables approximately 1745 patients to be transfused and thousands of
people to be treated with plasma-derived medicinal products per day [6].
In 2012, the Italian government, following the European Directive 2002/98/EC,
issued a series of national guidelines for regional authorities related to the accred-
itation of transfusion units dedicated to the collection and processing of blood
and its components [7]. In particular, some efficiency measures have been intro-
duced, according to which a consolidation of processing activities (blood analysis,
separation of blood components and transformation into plasma-derived products)
must be performed at a limited number of Blood Centers (BCs). Based on this
recommendation, a minimum of 40,000 units per year and for each BC should be
guaranteed. This target is significantly higher than the average BC productivity in
all the Italian regions. Indeed, the average BC productivity in Italy is of 9981 units
per year and, in the regions objective of our experimentation, namely Campania and
Puglia, this value is of 6890 and 7682 units per year, respectively [6].
Therefore, a reorganization of Italian regional BSC is required with the aim
of rationalizing its structure and guaranteeing the regional self-sufficiency. The
regional authorities recognize two main intervention strategies to increase the BC
productivity until the imposed threshold value: decreasing the number of available
BCs, choosing the ones to be left open among the already existing ones; increasing
A MILP Formulation for the Reorganization of the Blood Supply Chain. . . 53

the blood units assigned to each BC by employing mobile units to reach isolated
blood donation points. In addition to these strategies, as proposed in [8], we consider
also the possibility of performing a downgrade of the existing BCs to the so called
Blood Stations (BS), where only collection activities are carried out. The blood
collected at the BSs is then transferred to the BCs for the processing. Since the
propensity to donation is highly affected by the distance between the donors and
the collection facility, the introduction of such BSs should allow to further increase
the collected blood units per year. In the following we refer BC and BS as Blood
Facilities (BF).
As widely known, Operations Research methodologies represent a valuable
solution tool for decision problems arising in healthcare planning and management.
As a matter of fact, optimization problems in healthcare have received considerable
attention for over three decades, as shown in [9–11]. In particular, the literature
concerning BSC management is very ample and deals with many different strategic,
tactical and operational problems, differing for the time horizon, the nature of the
available data, the envisaged processes and the structure (number of levels) of the
system.
This work focuses on a strategic single period decision problem for the reorga-
nization of a multi-echelon BSC system. This problem falls within the classes of
covering and facility location problems (FLP). For the sake of the brevity, in the
following, we just give a brief overview of the literature dealing with strategic BSC
management problems coherent with the problem tackled in this work.
Several contributions deal with BSC management problems arising in specific
regions. Indeed, in [12] the authors tackle the problem of allocating health resources
throughout the area of Burgos, in the north of Spain. It is modeled and solved as
a variant of the p-center and maximal covering problems. In [13] a FLP related
to the blood services of Turkish Red Crescent at a regional scale is addressed.
The authors considered the problem as a hierarchical system in which we define
two echelons in the hierarchy of services. In [14] a capacitated maximal covering
problem is proposed to locate healthcare facilities in one of the districts in the state
of Selangor, Malaysia. Recently, in [15] the authors analyzed a strategic problem
concerning the territorial reorganization of regional blood management systems
envisaging two kind of blood facilities. The study was aimed at closing/reconverting
a set of operating BFs, already located in a region, to find a good trade-off solution
to attract donors and contain the management costs. The model was tested on the
real case study of Campania Region.
Other contributions, instead deal with more general problems and introduce new
requirements related to accessibility and quality of service. In [16] the authors
investigate the problem of locating several different facilities (e.g., hospitals,
universities, police workstations) in an urban area. Different optimization models
are proposed in dependence of the specific kind of facility and targets. The models
are then validated on several test cases so showing that they can represent a
valuable support tool for quantitative decision making. The concept of accessibility
is introduced in [15], where the authors provide a review of the main methodological
advancements dealing with the inequality issue in healthcare services. Various
54 A. Diglio et al.

methods have been proposed to measure healthcare accessibility, accounting for

both spatial and nonspatial factors. In [17] the blood collection and distribution
network design problem in response to the growing need for effective and efficient
management of blood systems is addressed. A mixed integer linear programming
(MILP) model is provided to design a cost-efficient network in terms of blood
facilities. In [18] the authors demonstrate the possibilities of improving the supply
of blood products while also reducing transportation costs within available budgets.
Integer linear programming (ILP) is used to model this location–allocation problem
based on contrasting objectives of improving supply while reducing transportation
costs.
Starting from the analyzed literature, in this chapter we extend the work
presented in [8] introducing new set of requirements and multiple objectives which
take into account accessibility and quality service level, coherently with what has
been done in the other cited contributions. In particular, the proposed reorganization
of the regional BSCs configures a multi-echelon facility location problem where the
number and the position of the BFs (BCs and BSs) has to be determined keeping
into account also the usage of collection mobile units. This chapter proposes a
MILP formulation for the problem, taking into account operational constraints and
several side objectives of the system. The multi-objective aspect is treated in a
soft constraint fashion. The proposed formulation is experienced and validated on
real data sets referred to the Campania and Puglia regions, showing the benefits of
such reorganization and providing also several managerial insights which can be
replicated in other contexts.
The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. A formal description of the
problem and the mathematical model are given in Sect. 2. Section 3 is devoted to
the presentation of our case study and to the discussion of the results. Finally, Sect.
4 provides the conclusions.

2 MILP Model for the Reorganization of a Regional BSC

The reorganization of the regional BSC involves two strategic decisions, one
related to the employed facilities and the other related to the donor assignments.
In particular, concerning the decisions regarding the blood facilities, each existing
structure can be:
• Held open as BC;
• Downgraded to be a BS, disabling blood processing and allowing only the
collection activity, which obviously implies lower running costs;
• Closed and no longer used.
In terms of assignment, we have to decide the one-to-one assignment of each
donor to the available BS, BC or mobile unit.
To model the problem, it is made reference to a localization space corresponding
to a generic region associated with an annual demand D for blood to be collected.
A MILP Formulation for the Reorganization of the Blood Supply Chain. . . 55

It is assumed that there is a set J of BCs located in the area to carry out both blood
collection and processing activities and a set I of discrete nodes, where potential
donors are concentrated. On the basis of these sets, we define dij as the distance
from a node i, i ∈ I, and a facility j, j ∈ J, and djj  as the distance between the pair of
 
facilities (j, j ), j, j ∈ J, respectively. More precisely, dij represents the distance each
donor is willing to travel and it has to be lower than or equal to a maximum radius
r. The blood collected in each BS must be transported to an active BC in order
to be processed. Due to some technical constraints, related to the phenomenon of
blood degradation, it is assumed that this allocation is possible if the distance djj 
is equal to or lower than a maximum radius dmax . Furthermore, it is assumed that
each BS can be assigned to a single BC, thus avoiding the possibility of dividing its
blood collection among different BCs; this hypothesis is justified by the fact that,
from a managerial point of view, it is desirable to define a group of BSs under the
competence of a single BC in order to better coordinate the associated flows of
materials and information. Based on previous notation, three more additional sets
are needed to model the problem: Ni , set of nodes j, j ∈ J, whose distance from the
 
i, i ∈ I, is less than or equal to r; Mj , set of nodes j , j ∈ J, whose distance from j,
j ∈ J is less than or equal to dmax ; Oi , set of nodes j, j ∈ J, whose distance from the
i, i ∈ I, is less than or equal to dmax .
Each BS is characterized by a collection capacity C, which indicates the
maximum number of units of whole blood it is able to collect each year. It is
also assumed that in each node i, i ∈ I, we have quantity of potential donors
equal to ai (α ∗ pi ), where α is the donation rate and pi the population of the
node i, respectively. Facilities carrying out processing activities are required to
achieve a minimum productivity target Pmin in terms of whole blood produced
per year, according to the guidelines issued by the national government. Assuming
that the regional transfusion system does not meet this requirement in the current
configuration, the reorganization is aimed at consolidating the processing activities
in a smaller number of facilities while maintaining a capillary collection in the area
under investigation. To this aim, it is assumed that the region is equipped with a set
of mobile units, in a number equal to n, which, unlike the fixed structures, are able
to collect the blood units at the donors location. Each mobile unit has a maximum
annual collection capacity t, and that it transports the collected units to a BC for
subsequent processing steps. As previously explained, it is assumed that the transfer
of the blood units collected in a generic node is carried out towards a single BC
located within the maximum radius dmax .
Therefore, the problem consists in choosing the right combination of BC and
BS among the existing BFs, with the aim of minimizing the associated costs, that
is, the costs necessary to move the blood units collected by the BS and mobile
units to the BCs (these costs are assumed to be proportional to the amount of blood
collected and the distances traveled), while satisfying a series of requirements in
terms of total blood collected (self-sufficiency goal) and productivity for each BC
(efficiency goal, i.e., reaching the minimum productivity avoiding the BF capacity
overrunning). These requirements are to be understood as soft requirements, since
56 A. Diglio et al.

they can be violated by paying a penalty cost, proportional to a parameter λ in the

objective function. According to these strategic decisions, the following decision
variables are defined:
Node variables (binary):
(s)
yj equal to 1 if a BS is active in node j, j ∈ J, in the final configuration, 0
otherwise;
(c)
yj equal to 1 if a BC is active in node j, j ∈ J, in the final configuration, 0
otherwise;
Assignment variables (binary):
xij equal to 1 if all the potential donors of node i, i ∈ I, are assigned to facility in
j, j ∈ J, 0 otherwise;
qjj  equal to 1 if the amount of blood collected from the structure in j, j ∈ J, is
 
processed by the structure in j , j ∈ J, 0 otherwise;
zij equal to 1 if the potential donors of the node i, i ∈ I, are assigned, through the
use of mobile units, to the BC in j, j ∈ J, 0 otherwise;
tijj  equal to 1 if the potential donors of the node i, i ∈ I, initially assigned to the
 
localized structure in j, j ∈ J, are reallocated to the BC in j , j ∈ J, 0 otherwise;
wij  j equal to 1 if both the variables xij and qj  j are equal to 1, 0 otherwise. These
variables are needed to linearize the product xij qj  j .
Penalty variables (non-negative):
ϕj shortage of processed blood with respect to minimum productivity requirement
Pmin of a BC in j, j ∈ J;
ψ j surplus with respect to the satisfaction of the maximum collection capacity
requirement C of the structure in j, j ∈ J;
δ scarcity in terms of fulfilment of the regional self-sufficiency requirement D.
In Fig. 1, we provide a graphical representation of the multi-echelon system
under investigation, with the values assumed by the related decision variables and
distance parameters.

Min z = i∈I j ∈J j ∈J ai djj  wijj  +  i∈I j ∈J ai dij zij

(1)
+ i∈I j ∈J j ∈J a i d jj  tijj  + j ∈J λ ϕ j + ψ j +δ

s. t.

yj(s) + yj(c) ≤ 1 ∀j ∈ J (2)

xij ≤ yj(s) + yj(c) ∀i ∈ I, ∀j ∈ Ni (3)


xij = 0 ∀i ∈ I (4)
j ∈(J −Ni )
A MILP Formulation for the Reorganization of the Blood Supply Chain. . . 57

Fig. 1 Representation of the problem setting, parameters and variables for a region under
investigation

   
| Ni | xij ≥ yj(s) + yj(c) ∀i ∈ I (5)
j ∈Ni j ∈Ni
   
dij  xij  + F − dij yj(s) + yj(c) ≤ F ∀i ∈ I, ∀j ∈ Ni (6)
j ∈Ni

∀j ∈ J, ∀j  ∈ J
(c)
qjj  ≤ yj  (7)
 (s) (c)
qjj  = yj + yj ∀j ∈ J (8)
j ∈Mj

qjj  = 0 ∀j ∈ J (9)
j ∈(J −Mj )

qjj ≥ yj(c) ∀j ∈ J (10)

  
xij + zij ≤ 1 ∀i ∈ I (11)
j ∈J

(c)
zij ≤ yj ∀i ∈ I, ∀j ∈ Oi (12)

zij = 0 ∀i ∈ I (13)
j ∈(J −Oi )

zij ≤ 1 ∀i ∈ I (14)
j ∈J

tijj  ≤ xij ∀i ∈ I, ∀j ∈ J (15)
j ∈J
58 A. Diglio et al.

∀i ∈ I, ∀j, j  ∈ J
(c)
tijj  ≤ yj  (16)

   
ai xij + ai zij + δ ≥ D (17)
i∈I j ∈J i∈I j ∈J
  
ai xij − ai tijj  − ψj ≤ C ∀j ∈ J (18)
i∈I i∈I j ∈J
 
i∈I j  ∈J ai wij  j − tij  j − i∈I j  =j ∈J ai tijj  +
(c) (19)
i∈I j  ∈J ai tij  j + i∈I ai zij + ϕj ≥ Pmin yj ∀j ∈ J
    
ai zij + ai tijj  ≤ tn (20)
i∈I j ∈J i∈I j ∈J j ∈J

wijj  ≤ xij ∀i ∈ I, ∀j, j  ∈ J (21)

wijj  ≤ qjj  ∀i ∈ I, ∀j, j  ∈ J (22)

wijj  ≥ xij + qjj  − 1 ∀i ∈ I, ∀j, j  ∈ J (23)

yj(s), yj(c) , xij , qjj  , wijj  , zij , tijj  ∈ {0, 1} ∀i ∈ I, ∀j, j  ∈ J (24)

ϕj , ψj ≥ 0 ∀j ∈ J
δ≥0

The objective function (1) minimizes four components. The first two components
concern the transportation costs from BS to BC and from donors to BC (using
mobile unit), respectively. The third component considers the cost for the reallo-
cation of a donor node from the nearest BC to a different one in case of capacity
overrun. Finally, the fourth component includes a penalty cost linked to the non-
compliance with the requirements of efficiency, self-sufficiency and the exceeding
of the maximum collection capacity. The constraints (2) ensure that a single type of
BF can be located in each node j, j ∈ J. Constraints (3) are consistency constraints
between assignment and node variables. Constraints (4) avoid the allocation of any
node i, i ∈ I, to BF j, j ∈ J, furthest away from the coverage radius r. The constraints
(5) impose that each node i, i ∈ I, must be assigned to at least one structure within
its coverage radius. The constraints (6) require the node i, i ∈ I, to be allocated,
within the radius r, to the nearest active structure. As a matter of fact, by setting
F = maxi ∈ I, j ∈ J {dij} the conditions become redundant for all those nodes where no
structure is found while, in relation to the active BF, they assign each node i, i ∈ I, to
 
node j , j ∈ J, at the minimum distance. The constraints (7) ensure that the node j,
 
j ∈ J, can be assigned only to structures j , j ∈ J, where a BC is open. Constraints (8)
dictate that any node j, j ∈ J, in which a BF is active in the final configuration must
A MILP Formulation for the Reorganization of the Blood Supply Chain. . . 59

be assigned to a single structure within the maximum allowable distance dmax . The
 
constraints (9) avoid the allocation of any BS j, j ∈ J, to the BC j , j ∈ J, farthest
from the coverage radius dmax . Constraints (10) ensure that each BC is assigned
to itself. The constraints (11) ensure that each node i, i ∈ I, can be allocated to a
single structure j, j ∈ J, located within the radius r or less. In other words, these
constraints establish that the potential donors offered by each node can be collected
by direct transfer to an active BF or using mobile units. The constraints (12) impose
that donors at nodes i, i ∈ I, allocated through mobile units and not covered by any
active BF within the radius r, can be conferred for processing to an active BC j,
j ∈ J, located within the covering radius dmax from node i, i ∈ I. This condition
is strengthened by the constraints (13) which avoid the allocation to BC j, j ∈ J,
placed further than the radius dmax from node i, i ∈ I. Furthermore, the constraints
(14) ensure that donors in each node i, i ∈ I, allocated through mobile units can
be assigned to only one BC. The constraints (15) establish that the reallocation of
a node i, i ∈ I, or the allocation through mobile units of the donors offered by a
node i, i ∈ I, located at a radius less than r from at least one active center can
be only carried out if this node has already been assigned to a structure j, j ∈ J.
Constraints (16) impose that these reallocations can occur only in correspondence
 
with active BCs in j , j ∈ J. Constraint (17) ensures that the amount of whole blood
collected is at least equal to the total regional blood demand D (self-sufficiency
goal). Constraints (18) define an upper limit to the capacity for the collection service
at each facility (efficiency goal). The constraints (19) require that the total amount
of whole blood processed in each BC, collected by the latter, by the BS and by the
mobile units assigned to it, exceeds the minimum productivity target Pmin (efficiency
goal). Constraint (20) ensure that the total amount of blood collected through the
mobile units does not exceed the maximum available capacity (tn). Constraints (21),
(22) and (23) ensure that the new binary variables wijj , introduced to linearize the
proposed model, are equal to 1 if donors from node i, i ∈ I are allocated to structure
 
j , j ∈ J and worked in j, j ∈ J. Finally, the constraints (24) define the nature of the
decision variables introduced.
It is useful to clarify that the decision variable tijj  has a twofold utility: on the
one hand it allows to extend the coverage radius by assigning nodes out of the
maximum coverage radii r and dmax , when the model requires it; on the other hand
it allows the model to choose whether to reassign the nodes or pay the penalty cost
for exceeding the maximum capacity C.

3 Application of the Model to the Case of the BSC

of the Campania and Puglia Regions

In this section we validate the proposed MILP formulation on two test cases
related to two Italian regions, namely Campania and Puglia. In particular, Sect.
3.1 describes the problem setting and used parameters; Sect. 3.2 is devoted to the
presentation and discussion of the obtained experimental results.
60 A. Diglio et al.

3.1 Test Case Description

Among all the Italian regions the chapter refers to Campania and Puglia for two
main reasons. The first reason is of geographical/topological nature, since Campania
has a compact shape while Puglia has an elongated one. The second reason is
the presence in Campania of the city of Naples acting as a very strong center of
gravity for the BCs, since its number of inhabitants and population density is largely
higher than the other provinces of the same region. These two different regions
are considered to investigate if the aforementioned conditions have a significant
effect on the solution returned by the proposed model. For both areas under
investigation a discretization based on the pre-exiting territorial division of the
region in municipalities is adopted. Donations are considered to be proportional
to population in each municipality by a coefficient α (donation rate) equal to the
percentage of population that donates blood according to historical data. It has
been assumed that every person donates once every year and that coefficient α is
uniformly distributed within the region. According to historical data provided by the
regional authority, it has been observed that, on average, in Italy almost 35 donations
every 1000 inhabitants have been carried out in the last 5 years (α = 0.0350).
Campania is currently characterized by the presence of 22 BCs, while Puglia has
21 opened ones. Both the regions have an average level of productivity significantly
lower than the minimum threshold Pmin imposed by EU and national regulation.
Furthermore, as far as the Campania region is considered, due to the presence of
the municipality of Naples, characterized by a largely higher population level than
the other cities of the region (almost 962,000 inhabitants) and by the presence of
nine BCs, the municipal territory has been divided into ten sub-areas in order to
obtain experiments of greater accuracy. In addition, the λ penalty value, based on a
calibration stage, has been set to a very large value (λ = 105), since not achieving the
requirements of self-sufficiency and efficiency is allowed but it should be strongly
avoided.
The three calibration parameters (r, dmax , α) have been varied to assess the
stability of the optimal solution.
In particular:
• The coverage radius r of a center reproduces the willingness of people to travel
longer distances following regional or national awareness-raising campaigns of
sensitization (r = 20 and 30 km);
• The coverage radius dmax evaluates the effects of the different blood transport
strategies collected by BS to the assigned BC and mobile units to the centers
(dmax = 40, 50 and 60 km);
• The donation rate α simulates the effects of potential regional campaigns of
awareness aimed at increasing the propensity of the population to donate blood,
or the decrease of this rate from its present value to simulate a stressful situation
for regional BMS (α = 0.030, 0.035 and 0.040).
A MILP Formulation for the Reorganization of the Blood Supply Chain. . . 61

All the experiments carried out will be evaluated in terms of open BC and BS,
objective function value and average accessibility value (a), defined as the sum of
minimum Euclidian distances of a node i where the donators ∗areconcentrated to an
d
open BC or BS in the considered scenario from a = i∈I |Iij| [19].

3.2 Experimental Results

This section will provide extensive results for both the regions. Furthermore,
graphical representations of several experienced scenarios are provided.
The test problems, generated for each combination of the above parameters, were
solved using Gurobi 9.0.1 solver on an Intel Core i7 (with 2.60 GigaHertz and 16.00
GigaBytes of RAM).
Table 1 shows the value of objective function (column 2), the average accessi-
bility (column 3) and the number of BCs and BSs opened in the scenario (column
7, 8) for every possible combination of the calibration parameters (column 4, 5, 6)
considered in the study for the Campania region (we will refer to every possible
configuration of the parameter as an instance, indicated by letter C followed by the
number of the scenario, note that the C19 represent the value for the as is scenario).
Table 2 is referred to the Puglia region (we will refer to every possible configuration

Table 1 Results for the Campania region varying the α,dmax and a parameters
Scenario Z a dmax α r BCs BSs Time (s)
C1 1.73 E+09 25.94 40 0.035 30 1 3 917
C2 1.23 E+09 24.93 50 0.035 30 2 3 956
C3 1.23 E+09 24.93 60 0.035 30 2 3 902
C4 8.02 E+08 32.99 40 0.04 30 1 3 481
C5 1.20 E+09 27.63 40 0.03 30 2 6 998
C6 8.06 E+08 26.62 50 0.03 30 2 3 1522
C7 7.65 E+08 27.19 50 0.04 30 2 2 632
C8 8.05 E+08 26.62 60 0.03 30 2 3 1270
C9 7.64 E+08 27.19 60 0.04 30 2 2 654
C10 9.14 E+08 29.77 40 0.035 20 2 3 342
C11 2.61 E+09 27.55 40 0.03 20 2 6 550
C12 2.68 E+09 28.40 40 0.04 20 1 4 307
C13 9.14 E+08 26.83 50 0.035 20 2 4 598
C14 2.19 E+09 24.59 50 0.03 20 1 6 519
C15 2.93 E+07 25.55 50 0.04 20 1 4 565
C16 9.14 E+08 26.83 60 0.035 20 2 5 541
C17 2.19 E+09 24.59 60 0.03 20 1 6 491
C18 2.85 E+07 25.55 60 0.04 20 2 4 254
C19 (as-is) 6.83 E+11 16.48 40 0.035 30 22 0 23
62 A. Diglio et al.

Table 2 Results for the Puglia region varying the α,dmax and a parameters
Scenario Z a dmax α r BCs BSs Time (s)
P1 3.28 E+06 46.08 40 0.035 30 2 2 52
P2 2.09 E+06 39.33 50 0.035 30 2 4 55
P3 1.75 E+06 38.78 60 0.035 30 2 4 61
P4 4.27 E+05 53.39 40 0.04 30 2 2 24
P5 8.07 E+08 32.33 40 0.03 30 2 2 49
P6 5.41 E+06 29.47 50 0.03 30 2 4 63
P7 4.27 E+05 53.39 50 0.04 30 2 4 46
P8 4.81 E+06 35.91 60 0.03 30 2 4 70
P9 4.27 E+05 53.39 60 0.04 30 2 4 54
P10 2.79 E+08 32.45 40 0.035 20 2 4 13
P11 1.80 E+09 26.94 40 0.03 20 2 4 12
P12 2.71 E+06 46.06 40 0.04 20 2 4 14
P13 6.41 E+06 41.09 50 0.035 20 2 4 10
P14 1.31 E+09 38.81 50 0.03 20 2 4 16
P15 2.71 E+06 46.06 50 0.04 20 2 4 12
P16 5.02 E+06 36.28 60 0.035 20 2 4 11
P17 7.65 E+08 33.5 60 0.03 20 2 4 18
P18 1.14 E+06 38.78 60 0.04 20 2 4 11
P19 (as-is) 7.28 E+14 17.75 40 0.035 30 21 0 7

of the parameter as an instance, indicated as P followed by the number of the

scenario, note that the P19 represent the value for the as is scenario). As clearly
shown in Tables 1 and 2 and Figs. 2, 3, and 4, two main trends emerged in both
Campania and Puglia. First of all, even in the worst case scenario the objective
function is significantly lower than the one in the “as-is” scenario. Moreover,
solutions move from the 22 open facilities for the Campania region (all BC in the
current configuration) to 8 centers (2 BC and 6 BS) in the worst case scenario. A
similar trend is observed for the Puglia region moving from the actual 21 open
centers (all BC) to 6 open centers (2 BC and 4 BS) in the scenario presenting
the worst values. Concerning computation time, as can be seen in the last column
of Tables 1 and 2, almost all cases have been solved within 900 s, which is
acceptable for strategic long-term decision problems. In addition, the experiments
show that the objective function has a decreasing trend as calibration parameters
(α and r) increase, which could be an indicator of how certain population awareness
campaigns can make the model more efficient regardless of the management policies
implemented, because they affect the maximum distance that donors are willing
to cover (r) and the percentage of people making donations (α). Finally, collected
results indicates that policies for optimal transport of blood products would allow
the dmax radius to be increased.
Among the analyzed scenarios, four cases of interest deserve to be further
discussed:
A MILP Formulation for the Reorganization of the Blood Supply Chain. . . 63

Fig. 2 Representation of the solutions of the “as-is” scenarios: (a) solution for Campania region;
(b) solution for Puglia region

Fig. 3 Representations of the solutions obtained for Campania Region: (a) solution with “as-is”
parameters; (b) solution of the a worst case scenario; (c) solution of the z worst case scenario

Fig. 4 Representations of the solutions obtained for Puglia Region: (a) solution with “as-is”
parameters; (b) solution of the a worst case scenario ; (c) solution of the z worst case scenario

1. The “as-is” scenario, in which we constrained the model to let open all the
BCs to simulate the situation currently running in Italy, using as combination
of parameters α = 0.035, r = 30, dmax = 40, which are given by the regional
authority, in order to have a benchmark to compare the solutions proposed by
our experimentation (Fig. 2a for Campania, Fig. 2b for Puglia);
64 A. Diglio et al.

2. The scenario running the same configuration of parameters as in the “as-is”

scenario, i.e., α = 0.035, r = 30, dmax = 40, but letting the model decide which
facility to left open as a BC, which one to downgrade (BS) and which one to
close (Fig. 3a for Campania, Fig. 4a for Puglia);
3. The worst case of average accessibility which corresponds to the following
parameter values: α = 0.04, r = 30, dmax = 40 for Campania; α = 0.03, r = 30,
dmax = 40 for Puglia (Fig. 3b for Campania, Fig. 4b for Puglia);
4. The worst case of the objective function value which corresponds to the following
parameter values:α = 0.03, r = 20, dmax = 40 for both regions (Fig. 3c for
Campania; Fig. 4c for Puglia).
For all this cases the solutions are drawn using the following notation:
• The red dots represent the centroids of each municipality in which the population
of the entire municipality is concentrated;
• The yellow dots represent the open BCs in the configuration considered;
• The blue squares represent BSs in the configuration considered;
• The black arcs indicate which BC, open in the configuration considered, is
associated with the demand present in each centroid;
• The blue arcs, when present, indicate that the demand present in the node is
associated with BC through the use of mobile units;
• The yellow links, when present, indicate that the demand for the node, initially
allocated to a facility, is reallocated to another facility through the use of mobile
units.
We can easily note that the as-is scenarios of both regions employ a high number
of BFs. On the contrary, the productivity threshold of the other scenarios decreases
the number of facilities of one order of magnitude. Such decrease reflects in low
accessibility values and few facilities placed in more densely populated area, so
pushing towards a high exploitation of mobile units.

4 Conclusions

This work analyzes the strategic problem concerning the reorganization of regional
blood management systems. It is aimed at closing or reconverting the facilities
already operating in a region and find a good compromise solution between the
objective of attracting donors (objective of self-sufficiency) and the need of reducing
the management costs (objective of efficiency). To this end, an optimization model
is proposed and developed, taking inspiration from the literature on multi-echelon
facility location. The main objective of this work is to provide an insight of the
impact of possible strategies on the regional BSC in order to support the competent
authorities in its reorganization, and to evaluate the sensitivity of the proposed
solutions to the variation of several parameters, in order to assess the impact of
certain policies on the proposed strategies. The model was tested on two real case
A MILP Formulation for the Reorganization of the Blood Supply Chain. . . 65

for the Campania and Puglia regions generating several scenarios. Varying some
key parameters to simulate a wide range of real situations allowed to investigate
the model robustness to the changing conditions, which is a very important factor
when locating healthcare facilities. Furthermore, a possible future development of
the problem is represented by the introduction of stochasticity in the problem, in line
with what is happening in the literature [20–22]. In this context, the model should
reallocate part of the donors to other centers to avoid stress scenarios caused by
unforeseen situations.

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 Part III
Logistics
Instance Generation Framework for
Green Vehicle Routing

Matheus Diógenes Andrade and Fábio Luiz Usberti

Abstract This paper proposes a framework for generating relevant sets of instances
for Green-Vehicle Routing Problems (G-VRP). In the G-VRP, electric vehicles with
limited autonomy can recharge at Alternative Fuel Stations (AFSs) to keep visiting
customers. To the best of our knowledge the G-VRP scientific literature accounts
with only two sets of instances. Our instance generation framework is based on
solving a maximum leaf spanning tree problem to address the location of AFSs, and
it guarantees that the generated instances are feasible (as opposed to the procedure
previously proposed). Two G-VRP variants are considered, (i) where consecutive
AFSs visits are not allowed, and (ii) where consecutive AFSs visits are allowed.
The results are analyzed and discussed, and conclusions on the benefits of the
contributions are presented.

Keywords Green vehicle routing problem · Maximum leaf spanning tree

problem · Instance generation · Green logistics

1 Introduction

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) has been extensively studied in the literature,
and many variants covering additional constraints related to scheduling, budget,
fleet heterogeneity, and others are considered [24]. Another research field that
has gained traction in the past decades is green logistics, which emerged like a

Supported by FAPESP (proc. 2015/11937-9, and 2018/25950-5), and CNPq (proc. 134616/2018-9,
314384/2018-9, and 435520/2018-0).

M. D. Andrade () · F. L. Usberti ()

Institute of Computing, UNICAMP University of Campinas - Av. Albert Einstein, Campinas,
Brazil
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 69

A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_6
70 M.D. Andrade and F. L. Usberti

discipline focused on the planning and operation of logistic systems with high
energy efficiency and low levels of carbon emission [20].
The environmental, geopolitical, and financial costs of the world’s dependence on
gasoline-powered vehicles are becoming increasingly worrisome [19]. The transport
sector is responsible for high levels of CO2 emissions. For example, the transport
sector in 2018 accounted for 28.2% of CO2 emission in the United States [14], and
in 2014 it accounted for 20.45% of CO2 emission worldwide [23]. Recognizing
the environmental impacts, logistic companies are making their operations greener
[17]. Furthermore, technological breakthroughs have enabled the development of
clean motor vehicles, that do not emit harmful substances in their exhaust fumes
and which create less noise without causing other types of pollution [12]. The
adoption of Alternative Fuel Vehicles (AFVs) has been regarded as one of the most
promising strategies to address the issues of fossil fuel dependence, air quality, and,
more recently, climate change [26]. However, there are still several major barriers to
broaden the adoption of AFVs. One of them is the maximum driving range that may
be insufficient to complete some delivery tours [17], forcing the AFVs to stop in
Alternative Fuel Stations (AFSs) in order to refuel. Thus, efficient methods that
locate AFSs are essential to guarantee the routing decision feasibility. Locating
AFSs to serve the maximum demand possible is the key to the early efforts in the
design of new infrastructures composed of AFVs [19].
Among VRP variants dealing with green logistics, there is the Green Vehicle
Routing Problem (G-VRP) [3]. The G-VRP has additional challenges associated
with operating a fleet of AFV and incorporating stops at AFS [15]. One of the
biggest challenges modeled by G-VRP is the reduced number of AFSs and the low
autonomy of AFVs.
The current G-VRP literature lacks a more general set of instances (as far as
we know, accounts for two sets [1, 15]) as well as a customizable framework to
generate relevant sets of instances. In this paper, we will introduce such a framework
to generate feasible G-VRP instances by solving a variant of the Maximum Leaf
Spanning Tree (MLST) problem. The MLST consists of finding a spanning tree on
a connected graph with the maximum number of leaves. We consider the leaves as
customers and the internal vertices as AFSs and the depot.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a literature review concerning
the available G-VRP instances sets. Section 3 provides a formal definition of the
problem. Section 4 describes the instance generation procedure. Section 5 presents
the computational experiments and the generated instances sets. And finally, Sect. 6
presents the final remarks and possible future works.

2 Literature Review

Plenty of works have approached the G-VRP [1–3, 5, 9, 10, 15, 18, 20], as well as
its variants for example, the Multiple Technologies and Partial Recharges (GVRP-
Instance Generation Framework for Green Vehicle Routing 71

MTPR) [16], the Recharging VRP (RVRP) [11, 25], the Electric Capacitated
Covering Tour Problem (ECCTP) [6], and many others [7, 13, 21].
The first G-VRP instances set was proposed by [15] and comprises 52 instances
with 20 to 500 customers and 3 to 28 AFSs. Each instance was randomly generated
assuming a grid of 330 by 300 miles. The majority of the instances in this set contain
20 customers and have been randomly generated to simulate different scenarios in
terms of customer and AFSs distribution. The depot location was fixed and assumed
to be located near the center of the grid in all scenarios. The larger instances [15]
were created by using a medical textile supply company depot location in Virginia
and a customer pool based on hospital locations in Virginia, and the District of
Columbia. The refueling stations correspond to actual biodiesel stations located in
the region. The number of customers in these larger instances ranges from 111
to 500. It should be mentioned that these instances may contain some infeasible
customers. According to [15], a customer is infeasible if it cannot be visited by a
route making at most one refueling stop. Motivated by the fact that most of these
instances are small, and the five larger instances with 111 customers only differ
in the number of refueling stations (ranging from 21 to 28), [1] proposed a new
set of G-VRP instances. This set contains four additional instances by extracting
the first 75 and 100 customers from the two 111-customer instances having 21 and
28 stations. Moreover, [1] created another set of instances by extracting customers
from the larger instances of [15]. The set AB [1] contains 40 instances with several
customers ranging from 50 to 100, split into two subsets AB1 and AB2. To solve
the AB1 instances, [1] assumed that all of the infeasible customers are removed a
priori. Concerning the AB2 instances, they have the same customers and refueling
stations as those in AB1, that is, AB2 instances contain customers that cannot be
served with a single refueling stop. Reference [1] solve the AB2 instances by an
exact approach that deals with consecutive refueling stops.

3 Problem Definition

In the G-VRP proposed by [15], a set of customers with known services times must
be attended by a set of homogeneous alternative fuel vehicles, which operate from a
common depot. These vehicles have a lower autonomy in terms of traveled distance,
forcing them to stop and refuel in AFSs. Each customer must be visited once by
exactly one vehicle and the time spent by a vehicle in a route cannot exceed a
maximum operation time. The objective is to reduce the total traveled distance.
Consider a complete directed graph G(V , E), where V = C ∪ F ∪ {v0 }, where
C is the set of customers, and F is the set of AFSs. The si  0 is the customer
vi service time, and sf  0 is the AFS vf refueling time. Vertex v0 ∈ V is the
depot and E is the set of edges. Edges (i, j ) ∈ E have metric costs cij > 0. The
ρ > 0 is the vehicle energy consumption rate, and eij = cij ρ is the required energy
c
to traverse edge (i, j ). The ξ > 0 is the vehicle average speed, and tij = ξij is the
required time to traverse the edge (i, j ). In the depot, there is a set M = {1, . . . , |C|}
72 M.D. Andrade and F. L. Usberti

of homogeneous vehicles with an autonomy of β and maximum operation time T .

The goal of G-VRP consists in defining at most |M| routes with minimum cost
satisfying the following constraints:
• Each route begins and ends at the vertex depot v0 ;
• Each vertex vi ∈ C is visited once by exactly one route;
• Each vertex vf ∈ F can be visited multiple times by multiple routes, thus, each
route might have subcycles;
• The autonomy of a vehicle decreases in eij when it traverses edge (i, j ) ∈ E.
It is not possible for a vehicle to traverse an edge with a required energy higher
than its autonomy. When the vehicle visits an AFS, its autonomy is restored to
β;
• The time spent by a route must not exceed T .

4 Instance Generation Framework

We consider two types of instances, the first (I1 ) not allowing consecutive AFS
visits to serve a customer (as considered by [15]), and the second (I2 ) allowing
such property (as considered by the [1]’s instances set AB2). These instances are
generated as solutions to a variant of the MLST.
Figure 1 contains three subfigures, Fig. 1a shows an example of an MLST
instance, and the two remaining subfigures present examples of valid solutions for
that instance, where the nodes in grey are the leaves. Figure 1b shows a non-optimal
solution, whereas Fig. 1c shows the optimal solution.
In our context, an MLST instance is given by a graph with a distinct vertex
(root) representing the depot. In the MLST solution, the leaves correspond to the

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 1 An MLST instance and two examples of solutions. (a) An MLST instance with six nodes
and seven edges. (b) An MLST solution with three leaves. (c) The MLST optimal solution with
five leaves
Instance Generation Framework for Green Vehicle Routing 73

G-VRP customers and the remaining nodes are the AFSs and depot. There are three
main reasons to use the MLST problem as the framework to generate the set of
instances. (i) the generated instances ensure that every customer can be reached by
a vehicle starting at the depot and visiting one or more AFSs, (ii) the generated
instances maximize the number of customers that can be served while maintaining
feasibility, and (iii) despite the MLST being NP-hard, the literature provides fast
exact approaches based on ILP.
In the flow-based model proposed by [22] the MLST is reduced to the Maximum
Leaf Spanning Arborescence (MLSA) problem by replacing each edge (u, v) from
the original graph G(V , E) by two oppositely directed arcs (u, v) and (v, u)
obtaining a digraph D = (V , A). In this case, V contains the customers with
the depot, and A the set of oppositely directed arcs between all the nodes in V .
The model considers a new vertex vt (terminal) along with a set of artificial arcs
{(i, t) : vi ∈ V \{vr }} where vr is the root, which in our case is v0 (the depot). Let
  
D = (V , A ) be the resulting digraph, and let cij > 0 : (i, j ) ∈ E be the cost of
edge (i, j ) ∈ E.
Below is presented the MILP formulation FMLSA used to generate the set of

instances I1 . The decision variable fij represents a flow in arc (i, j ) ∈ A : vi =
vt ∧ vj = vt , and fit = 1 if vertex vi ∈ V \{v0 } is a leaf in the solution. The
user-defined parameter r represents the number of AFSs (internal vertices) of the
solution.

Max s = fit (1)
vi ∈V \{v0 }

s.t.
s  |V | − 1 − r (2)

f0j = |V | − 1 + s (3)
vj ∈V
 
fj i − fij = 1 vi ∈ V \{v0 } (4)
vj ∈V vj ∈V \{v0 }

fij + 2(|V | − 2)fit  2(|V | − 2) vi ∈ V \{v0 } (5)
vj ∈V \{v0 }

fij = 0 ∀vi , vj ∈ V : cij > β (6)

 β
1 − fj t  fit ∀vi ∈ V \{v0 } : ci0 > (7)
2
vj ∈V :cij  β2 ∧cj0 β

0  fij  2|V | − 2 vi , vj ∈ V (8)


fit ∈ B (i, t) ∈ A (9)
74 M.D. Andrade and F. L. Usberti

Constraint (2) forces the number of leaves (customers) to be less than or equal to
|V | − 1 − r. Constraint (3) ensures that the root outgoing flow is equal to |V | − 1 (to
attend all the demand of V \{v0 }) plus the number of leaves s, since each leaf sends
one unit of flow to the terminal. Constraint (4) says that each vertex distinct from v0
and vt consumes one unit of flow. Constraint (5) implies that if vi is a leaf, then it can
only send flow to the terminal. Constraint (6) forbids flow in arcs with cost greater
then β. Constraint (7) prohibits any leaf (customer) to be served after two or more
consecutive AFS visits. Constraints (8) state that flows are positive and bounded by

2|V | − 2. Constraints (9) define the domain constraints for fit : (i, t) ∈ A . The set
of instance I2 was generated by replacing the constraints (7) by the constraints (10),
that guarantees for every customer that there will be at least one AFS in the range
of half the autonomy of a fully charged vehicle:
 β
1 − fj t  fit ∀vi ∈ V \{v0 } : ci0 > (10)
2
vj ∈V :cij  β2

Suitable choices were made for the values of the parameters, as shown below. It
is worth pointing out that the instance generation framework allows adjusting these
parameters to conform with the underlying application. The vehicle average speed
was defined as being the value necessary to traverse in one unit of time the instance
longest edge:

ξ = maxvi ,vj ∈V cij (11)

The AFS service time was defined as equal to one unit of time:
maxvi ,vj ∈V cij
sf = =1 ∀vf ∈ F (12)
ξ

That is, an AFSs service time is equals to the traversing time of the longest graph
edge, since we want the refueling time to be relatively high. The customer’s service
time was defined as:
randomvi ,vj ∈V cij
si = ∀vi ∈ F (13)
ξ

That is, a customer service time is equals to a random graph edge traversing time,
since we want to include diversity in the customers service time. It is noteworthy that
the services times of every node and traversing time of every edge are normalized
in the interval (0, 1].
The route time limit T was defined as:

T = 2α (14)
Instance Generation Framework for Green Vehicle Routing 75

Where α = maxvi ∈C λi represents the maximum λi for every vi ∈ C, and λi

represents the minimum time feasible route containing only AFSs, the depot, and
the customer vi ∈ C.
From each MLST instance, three G-VRP instances were generated, varying the
number of AFSs in the floor of 10%, 20%, and 30% of the total number of vertices
(excluding the depot). Algorithm 1 gives the pseudocode of the instance generation
framework.
Algorithm 1: G-VRP instance generation framework
Data: An MLST instance I and an AFS rate r.

Result: A G-VRP instance I .
1 i ← 0;
2 j ← a∈A ca ;

3 Let I ← nil be an empty G-VRP instance;
4 while i  j do
5 β ←  i+j 2 ;
6 if FMLSA with β and r is feasible then
7 Let S be a FMLSA with β and r;

8 I ← a G-VRP solution with customers as the leaves of S, with depot as the root
of S, with AFSs as the remaining nodes of S, with the vehicle fuel capacity as
β, and following the equations (12–14);
 
9 Let r be the number of AFSs given by the I ;

10 if r = r then
11 j ← β − 1;
12 continue;
13 end
14 end
15 i ← β + 1;
16 end

The above algorithm does a binary search in [0, a∈A ca ] to find the smallest
integer value for β that produces a MLSA feasible solution. The steps (1–2) declare
and initialize the binary search leftmost and rightmost pointers i and j . In step (4)
we have the binary search base case condition. Step (5) declares and initializes β
as the ceil of the value at the middle of the rightmost and leftmost pointers. In the

steps (11) and (15) the pointer j is updated to β − 1 if r = r, and the leftmost

pointer i is updated to β + 1 if there is no feasible solution or if r > r.
The proposed framework is very customizable to other configurations, allowing
straightforward changes to the graph structure (by changing the input graph), the
AFSs rate r, the β binary search bounds (steps (1–2) of Algorithm 1), the vertices
service times (12–13), and the vehicle time limit T (14).
76 M.D. Andrade and F. L. Usberti

5 Computational Experiments

The set P of VRP instances [8] were adopted as the instances for the MLST. These
instances define their edges weight as cij = x + 12 , i.e., the closest integer to x,
for each edge (i, j ), where x is the Euclidean distance between vertices vi and vj .
The machine used to execute the experiments was an Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU
E5-2420 @1.90GHz, with 32 GB of RAM, and with 1TB of HD. The operational
system used was the Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS (bionic) 64 bits. The programming
language used to generate the instances and to run the proposed models was C++.
The source code is available at [4]. The MILP solver used was CPLEX 12.10 with
ILOG Concert Technology using the Academic license.
Table 1 shows the G-VRP generated instances. As we can see the proposed
framework is very fast, resulting in execution times of at most six seconds for every
instance. An interesting observation is that in Augerat’s VRP instances [8] with the
same number of customers, the trade-offs among parameters β, |F | and T become
apparent. In particular, as more AFSs are allocated, the smaller β becomes, forcing
the vehicles to make more stops to refuel. These trade-offs analysis could assist
in the decision making process of AFS allocation of a city, for example, given the
estimates of the average vehicles autonomies.

Table 1 Sets I1 and I2 of instances

I1 I2
[8] ’s instance |C| |F | β T CPU(s) |C| |F | β T CPU(s)
P-n16-k8 13 2 55 6 0,23 13 2 55 6 0,22
11 4 25 10 0,16 12 3 30 7 0,17
10 5 23 10 0,25 10 5 25 7 0,21
P-n19-k2 17 1 60 8 0,27 17 1 60 8 0,22
14 4 25 13 0,28 15 3 32 8 0,29
13 5 21 17 0,25 13 5 30 7 0,2
P-n20-k2 17 2 55 8 0,24 17 2 55 8 0,22
15 4 25 13 0,22 16 3 32 8 0,28
14 5 21 17 0,2 14 5 30 7 0,19
P-n21-k2 18 2 40 8 0,2 18 2 40 8 0,19
15 5 23 12 0,24 16 4 32 8 0,29
13 7 19 14 0,46 13 7 25 7 0,19
P-n22-k2 19 2 40 8 0,18 19 2 40 8 0,23
16 5 23 12 0,3 17 4 32 8 0,31
14 7 19 22 0,23 14 7 25 7 0,18
P-n23-k8 20 2 40 8 0,3 20 2 40 8 0,35
17 5 23 12 0,23 18 4 32 8 0,23
15 7 19 16 0,32 15 7 25 7 0,24
(continued)
Instance Generation Framework for Green Vehicle Routing 77

Table 1 (continued)
I1 I2
[8] ’s instance |C| |F | β T CPU(s) |C| |F | β T CPU(s)
P-n40-k5 35 4 51 7 0,63 35 4 51 7 0,62
31 8 27 11 0,68 32 7 32 7 0,64
27 12 23 11 0,56 27 12 27 6 0,58
P-n45-k5 40 4 42 7 0,73 40 4 42 7 0,8
35 9 25 11 0,78 35 9 30 6 0,73
29 15 21 20 1,15 30 14 27 6 1,04
P-n50-k7 45 4 42 7 0,86 45 4 42 7 0,96
39 10 25 11 0,9 39 10 27 7 0,86
32 17 19 15 0,9 33 16 25 7 0,93
P-n51-k10 45 5 36 7 0,9 45 5 36 7 0,91
37 13 23 11 0,92 40 10 30 6 0,97
31 19 19 19 0,96 33 17 25 6 0,84
P-n55-k7 49 5 32 7 1,05 49 5 32 7 1,13
43 11 23 16 1,13 40 14 25 7 0,99
33 21 17 15 0,96 38 16 25 7 1,09
P-n60-k10 54 5 36 7 1,67 54 5 36 7 2,06
47 12 23 13 1,49 47 12 27 6 1,38
42 17 19 15 1,55 42 17 25 6 1,36
P-n65-k10 58 6 36 7 1,87 58 6 36 7 1,94
50 14 23 16 1,63 50 14 27 6 1,38
40 24 17 15 1,96 45 19 25 6 1,77
P-n70-k10 63 6 36 7 2,28 63 6 36 7 2,24
54 15 23 25 2,01 54 15 27 6 1,8
48 21 19 20 2,06 48 21 25 6 1,87
P-n76-k4 68 7 32 12 2,6 68 7 32 7 2,42
58 17 21 13 2,8 59 16 27 6 1,99
51 24 17 19 2,72 52 23 25 6 2,41
P-n101-k4 88 12 25 11 5,23 90 10 32 7 5,06
78 22 19 15 5,35 80 20 25 6 4,42
65 35 15 19 4,97 68 32 23 6 4,17

6 Conclusions

The presented work addresses the lack of G-VRP instances in the literature by
proposing an effective framework to generate feasible G-VRP instances. The
proposed method is highly customizable, allowing the generated instances to
conform with the underlying application and to easily change the minimum number
of AFSs, the vehicle properties (11), (14), and the vertices service times (12–13).
As future research, we consider generalizing the proposed framework to other
variants of VRP, by including other constraints such as time windows, vehicle
78 M.D. Andrade and F. L. Usberti

capacity, multiple depots, and others. An extended framework should also be

considered to recommend alternative graph structures for the instance.

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An Optimization Model for Service
Requests Management in a 5G Network
Architecture

Gabriella Colajanni and Daniele Sciacca

Abstract In this paper, we present a three-tier supply chain network model

consisting of a fleet of UAVs organized as a FANET (Fly ad hoc network) connected
one to each other with direct wireless links, managed by a fleet of UAV controllers,
whose purpose is to provide 5G network slices on demand to users and devices
on the ground. The aim of this paper is to determine the optimal distributions of
request flows. We obtain a constrained optimization problem for which we derive the
associated Variational inequality formulation. Also, qualitative properties in terms
of existence and uniqueness of solution are provided. Finally, a numerical example
is performed to validate the effectiveness of the model.

Keywords Variational inequality · Service requests management · UAVs ·

Three-tier supply chain

1 Introduction

In the last years the impact of 5G technologies is revolutionizing all social and
economic sectors. Therefore, several studies have focused on mobile networks and
the basic idea is to create virtual logical networks, called “Network Slices”, which
share the same physical access and transport infrastructure, to support different
application cases with particular characteristics and requirements. The same net-
work can have multiple slices, each dedicated to specific services or customers.
This infrastructure guarantees greater flexibility, efficient use of resources and
greater business opportunities. In this paper we consider some users and devices
on the ground which require different application or network services (see [9] for
an example based on Video Monitoring). Such service requests are managed and
executed by a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) organized as a Flying Ad

G. Colajanni () · D. Sciacca

Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Catania, Catania, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 81

A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_7
82 G. Colajanni and D. Sciacca

hoc Network (FANET) whose purpose is to provide 5G network slices (see [10]),
reaching also remote rural areas (see [3] and [1] for a UAV-Based Cellular Networks
managing problem in rural areas and in which authors propose a spatial and a
temporal decomposition). Particularly, we suppose that the UAVs are distributed
in two different layers: the controller layer and the execution layer. The controller
UAVs acquire service requests from users and devices on the ground and send them
to the UAVs of the fleet on the upper level, where the services are performed.
In this paper we suppose also the possibility of the provider to add additional
drones to perform the services requested on demand and we also take into account
the quality of the network in providing services.
So, the purpose of this paper is to propose a constrained optimization model,
aimed at maximizing the provider’s profit, given by the total revenue obtained from
the sale of services to users and devices on the ground to which all transmission
and execution costs are subtracted, as well as the costs for additional UAVs are
subtracted while the quality in terms of profit is summed (see [4] for an optimization
model of IaaS provider). Of course, the model proposed in this paper takes into
account the managing and execution capabilities of each UAV, the conservation laws
related to the supply chain network and, a budget and a Quality of Service (QoS)
constraints (see [8]).
Therefore, the proposed optimization model allows us to determine the equilib-
rium flows of the quantity of services requested by each user or device to each
controller UAV, the quantity of service requests that each controller UAV sent to
each UAV of the fleet, the quantity of executed services by each UAV, if and which
additional UAVs to activate.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Sect. 2 we present the
mathematical model and derive the optimality conditions of the provider, who
desires to maximize its profit. In Sect. 3 we provide a variational formulation of
the problem and qualitative properties in terms of existence and uniqueness of
the solution. To validate the effectiveness of the model, in Sect. 4 we perform an
illustrative numerical example. Section 5 is dedicated to the conclusions.

2 The Model

The supply chain network, consisting of a fleet of UAVs, controller UAVs and
users or devices on the ground, is depicted in Fig. 1. The typical user or device
on the ground is denoted by g, g = 1, . . . , G, and could require K types of
services (network services or application services). The requests for service k,
k = 1, . . . , K, from users and devices are received by the controller UAVs which
are spatially distributed in the considered geographical area. Each controller UAV
u, u = 1, . . . , U, sends the requests for execution of the services to the fleet of
UAVs at the higher level.
An Optimization Model for Service Requests Management in a 5G Network. . . 83

Fig. 1 Network topology

84 G. Colajanni and D. Sciacca

The fleet of UAVs consists of F̂1 pre-existing UAVs (the typical one is denoted
by fˆ), to which the provider can join F̃2 additional UAVs. Therefore, we consider
the following sets:
• F̂1 = {1̂, . . . , fˆ, . . . , F̂1 }, the set of pre-existing UAVs;
• F̃2 = {1̃, . . . , f˜, . . . , F̃2 }, the set of possible additional UAVs.
Each UAV of the upper level receives the service requests from the controller
UAVs and performs the executions.
In this paper we analyze the supply chain network using a system-optimization
approach in order to find the global optimization problem. Therefore, the purpose
of this paper is to determine a model that aims to maximize the total profit (defined
by the difference between the revenue and the sum of costs) and the quality.
The variables and the parameters of the model are described in Tables 1 and 2,
respectively.
Now, we present the cost and quality functions. Let:
• cgu be the transmission cost of the service requests from user or device g to

K
controller UAV u and let us assume cgu is a function of xguk :
k=1



K
cgu = cgu xguk = cgu (Xgu ), ∀g = 1, . . . , G, ∀u = 1, . . . , U.
k=1

In particular, for these functions we assume the following generic quadratic

expression:
2

K 
K

cgu (Xgu ) = ηgu xguk + ηgu xguk , ∀g, ∀u.
k=1 k=1

Table 1 Variables for the model

Notation Variables
xguk ≥ 0 The quantity of service k requested by user or device g on the ground to
the controller UAV u and let us group all these quantities into the vectors
Xgu for all k and X for all g and for all u
yufˆk ≥ 0 The quantity of service k requests sent by the controller UAV u to the
pre-existing UAV fˆ ∈ F̂1 belonging to the upper tier fleet and let us group
all these quantities into the vectors: Yufˆ for all k, Yfˆk for all u, Yfˆ for all u
and for all k and Y 2 for all u, fˆ and k
zuf˜k ≥ 0 The quantity of service k requests sent by the controller UAV u to the
additional UAV f˜ ∈ F̃2 which the provider can decide to activate and let
us group all these quantities into the vectors: Zuf˜ for all k, Zf˜ for all u and
k and Z for all u, f˜ and k
An Optimization Model for Service Requests Management in a 5G Network. . . 85

Table 2 Parameters for the model

Notation Parameters
Rgk The demand for service (application service or network service) k from the
user or device g on the ground, ∀g = 1, . . . , G, k = 1, . . . , K
Su The maximum capacity related to the controller UAV u, that is the
maximum number of service requests that the controller UAV u is able to
manage, ∀u = 1, . . . , U
sk The execution space requested to perform service k, ∀k = 1, . . . , K
Sf The maximum capacity related to the UAV f , ∀f ∈ F3 , that is the
maximum execution space that the (pre-existing or additional) UAV f can
bear
B The maximum available budget for additional UAVs at the highest level of
the network
αk The unit benefit associated with the quality of service k, ∀k = 1, . . . , K,
and it can be intended as a parameter that allows us to express the quality
in terms of profit (same unit of measure of the cost functions); hence, the
gain that the provider receives and which it aims to maximize is given by
the product between αk and the quality:
⎛ ⎞
 U  U 
αk qk ⎝ yufˆk + zuf˜k ⎠;
u=1 fˆ∈F1 u=1 f˜∈F2

note that the parameter αk enables distinct services to have different profits
associated to their quality, based on their importance and needs
Qk The minimum quality of the service (QoS) k, ∀k = 1, . . . , K, previously
established in a service-level agreement (SLA), that the provider has to
guarantee
ρk The revenue obtained for a unit of service k executed, ∀k = 1, . . . , K

• cufˆ and cuf˜ be the transmission cost of the service requests from controller UAV
u to any pre-existing UAV f ∈ F̂1 and any additional UAV f ∈ F̃2 , respectively,

K 
K
and let us assume cufˆ is a function of yufˆk and cuf˜ is a function of zuf˜k
k=1 k=1
:
 

K 
K
cufˆ = cufˆ yufˆk , cuf˜ = cuf˜ zuf˜k ∀u, ∀fˆ ∈ F̂1 , ∀f˜ ∈ F̃2
k=1 k=1
86 G. Colajanni and D. Sciacca

that is cufˆ = cufˆ (Yufˆ ), ∀u = 1, . . . , U, ∀fˆ ∈ F̂1 and cuf˜ = cuf˜ (Zuf˜ ), ∀u =
1, . . . , U, ∀f˜ ∈ F̃2 . For the aforementioned functions, the following general
quadratic expression is assumed:
2

K 
K
cufˆ (Yufˆ ) = κufˆ yufˆk + κ yufˆk , ∀u, fˆ ∈ F̂1 ,
ufˆ
k=1 k=1

2

K 
K
cuf˜ (Zuf˜ ) = μuf˜ zuf˜k + μuf˜ zufˆk , ∀u, f˜ ∈ F̃2 ,
k=1 k=1

(E) (E)
• c and c ˜ be the execution costs of requested services to the pre-existing
fˆ f
UAV fˆ ∈ F̂1 and to the additional UAV f˜ ∈ F̃2 , respectively, and let us assume
(E)
c ˆ is a function of the total amount of executed services by pre-existing UAVs,
f

U 
K
yufˆk and c(E)
˜ is a function of the total amount of executed services by
f
u=1 k=1

U 
K
additional UAVs, zuf˜k :
u=1 k=1



U 
K  
c(E) = c(E) yufˆk = c(E) Yfˆ , ∀fˆ ∈ F̂1 ,
fˆ fˆ ˆ
f
u=1 k=1



U 
K  
∀f˜ ∈ F̃2 .
(E) (E) (E)
c˜ = c˜ zuf˜k =c˜ Zf˜ ,
f f f
u=1 k=1

In particular, we assume that such functions have the following quadratic

expression:
2
  
U 
K 
U 
K
c(E) Yfˆ = δ yufˆk + δ yufˆk ,
fˆ
u=1 k=1 u=1 k=1

2
  
U 
K 
U 
K
(E) 
c˜ Zf˜ =  zuf˜k + zuf˜k ;
f
u=1 k=1 u=1 k=1
An Optimization Model for Service Requests Management in a 5G Network. . . 87

• cf˜ be the cost due to add a new UAV f˜ ∈ F̃2 at the highest level of the network
and let us assume cf˜ is a function of the flow of requests received:


U 
K  
cf˜ zuf˜k = cf˜ Zf˜ , ∀f˜ ∈ F̃2 ,
u=1 k=1

we will assume this function in such a way that it is null in the event that
no service request is sent to the UAV f˜ (cf˜ (0) = 0). The generic quadratic
expression for these functions is as follows:
2 

U 
K 
U 
K
cf˜ (Zf˜ ) = β zuf˜k +β 
zuf˜k , ∀f˜ ∈ F̃2 ,
u=1 k=1 u=1 k=1

• qk be the quality function related to the service k, ∀k = 1, . . . , K, and let us

 U 
assume qk is an increasing function of the executed services yufˆk +
u=1 fˆ∈F1
U 
zuf˜k :
u=1 f˜∈F2

⎛ ⎞
 U  U   
qk = qk ⎝ yufˆk + zuf˜k ⎠ = qk Yfˆ , Zf˜ , ∀k = 1, . . . , K.
u=1 fˆ∈F1 u=1 f˜∈F2

Particularly, we will assume such a function depends on the difference between

the total demand for service k that all the users and devices require and the
amount of executed
⎛ service k that they receive from ⎞ all UAVs belonging to the
G  
U  
U
fleet, Rgk − ⎝ yufˆk + zuf˜k ⎠. For the quality function, we
g=1 u=1 fˆ∈F1 u=1 f˜∈F2
assume the following general expression:
⎛ ⎛ ⎞⎞2
⎜ 
G
⎜ U  U 
⎟⎟
⎝ Rgk − ⎝ yufˆk + zuf˜k ⎠⎠
  G g=1 u=1 fˆ∈F1 u=1 f˜∈F2
qk Yfˆ , Zf˜ = Rgk − , ∀k.
g=1 
G
Rgk
g=1
88 G. Colajanni and D. Sciacca


U  
U  
G
We observe that if yufˆk + zuf˜k = Rgk , i.e. the total demand
u=1 fˆ∈F1 u=1 f˜∈F2 g=1
for service k that all users and devices require its equal to the amount of executed
service k that they receive from all UAVs belonging to the fleet, then the quality
G U  U 
reaches the maximum value ( Rgk ). If, instead, yufˆk + zuf˜k =
g=1 u=1 fˆ∈F1 u=1 f˜∈F2
0, i.e. the amount of executed service k that users and devices receive from all
UAVs belonging to the fleet is null, but G g=1 Rgk > 0, then the quality of services
U  U 
provider reaches the minimum value 0. Finally, if yufˆk + zuf˜k <
u=1 fˆ∈F1 u=1 f˜∈F2
G U 
Rgk , the function quality increases with the executed services yufˆk +
g=1 u=1 fˆ∈F1
U 
zuf˜k , as supposed before.
u=1 f˜∈F2
Note that in this paper we also take into account the limitation that distinguishes
UAVs, that is the limited flight duration due to the consumption of batteries and that
we integrated in the maximum capacity of each UAV and in the execution cost of
requested services, indeed we are assuming that each execution has a cost in terms
of battery power because this causes a reduction of the flight duration. No cost of
handling requests, at the level of controller UAVs, is considered in this paper, since
we consider them negligible and we assume the cost to keep the UAVs u in flight
constant and therefore we do not include it in our model, but extension to a more
general case is easy.
As previously mentioned, we provide a system-optimization perspective for
the entire supply chain network, then, we analyze the system from the point of
view of the network and service provider. Therefore, the presented model aims
at determining the optimal distributions of services requests flows. The objective
function consists of the profit to maximize and is given by the total revenue
obtained from the sale of services to users and devices on the ground, to which all
transmission and execution costs are subtracted, as well as the costs for additional
UAVs, while the quality in terms of profit is summed.
An Optimization Model for Service Requests Management in a 5G Network. . . 89

The problem formulation is as follows:

⎛ ⎞
 

U 
K
⎜  ⎟ 
G U 
K 
U  
K
max ρk · ⎝ yufˆk + zuf˜k ⎠ − cgu xguk − cufˆ yufˆk
fˆ∈F̂1 f˜∈F̃2 f ∈F̂1
u=1 k=1 g=1 u=1 k=1 u=1 ˆ k=1

  

U  
K  
U 
K  
U 
K
− cuf˜ zuf˜k − c(E)
ˆ
yufˆk − c(E)
˜ zuf˜k
f f
f ∈F̃2 fˆ∈F̂1 f˜∈F̃2
u=1 ˜ k=1 u=1 k=1 u=1 k=1

 ⎛ ⎞
 
U 
K 
K  U  U 
− cf˜ zuf˜k + αk qk ⎝ yufˆk + zuf˜k ⎠ (1)
u=1 fˆ∈F1 u=1 f˜∈F2
f˜∈F̃2
u=1 k=1 k=1

subject to


U
xguk = Rgk ∀g = 1, . . . , G, ∀k = 1, . . . , K, (2)
u=1


K 
G
xguk ≤ S u ∀u = 1, . . . , U, (3)
k=1 g=1

  
G
yufˆk + zuf˜k ≤ xguk ∀u = 1, . . . , U, ∀k = 1, . . . , K, (4)
fˆ∈F̂1 f˜∈F̃2
g=1


U 
K
sk yufˆk ≤ Sfˆ ∀fˆ ∈ F̂1 , (5)
u=1 k=1


U 
K
sk zuf˜k ≤ Sf˜ ∀f˜ ∈ F̃2 , (6)
u=1 k=1

 
U 
K
cf˜ zuf˜k ≤ B, (7)
f˜∈F̃2
u=1 k=1
⎛ ⎞

U  
U 
qk ⎝ yufˆk + zuf˜k ⎠ ≥ Qk ∀k = 1, . . . , K, (8)
u=1 fˆ∈F1 u=1 f˜∈F2

xguk , yufˆk , zuf˜k ∈ R+

∀g = 1, . . . , G, ∀u = 1, . . . , U, ∀fˆ ∈ F̂1 , ∀f˜ ∈ F̃2 , ∀k = 1, . . . , K. (9)

90 G. Colajanni and D. Sciacca

The first constraint, (2), represents the conservation law, according to which the
quantity of service k requested by user or device g on the ground to all controller
UAVs equals the demand Rgk .
Constraint (4) establishes that the quantity of service requests that the controller
UAV u can receive is less than or equal to the maximum capacity. Observe that
constraint (2) must be verified, therefore, the total capacity of controller UAVs are
such as to satisfy the demand for services from all users and devices.
Constraint (4) states that the quantity of service k requests sent by the controller
UAV u to all the pre-existing and additional UAVs is less than or equal to the
quantity of service k requested by all users or devices on the ground to the controller
UAV u.
The requests of services that each pre-existing and additional UAV fˆ and f˜,
∀fˆ ∈ F̂1 and ∀f˜ ∈ F̃2 , can receive must satisfy the capacity constraints (5) and (6)
which establishes that the execution space must not exceed the maximum allowed.
Constraint (7) means that there is a budget limit, B, which represents the
maximum available budget for adding new UAVs at the highest level of the network.
Constraint (8) affirms that the QoS defined in the SLA is guaranteed.
The latest constraint family defines the domain of the variables of the problem.

3 Variational Formulation

We now provide a variational formulation of problem (1)–(9) (see [2, 5, 6] for

variational formulations applied to other fields). The advantages of using this
formulation are manifold. Firstly, we can use the well-known variational inequality
theory which guarantees us results of existence and uniqueness of the solution,
which we will provide below, and, secondly, through the use of the Lagrangian
function we can relax the critical constraints (7) and (8) considering the associated
Lagrange multipliers. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, no one has ever
studied the variational formulation of this 5G network problem before.
First, we make the following assumption:
Hp. Let all the involved cost functions be continuously differentiable and convex
and the quality functions be continuously differentiable and concave. 

This assumption is justified by the concept of diminishing marginal utility,
according to which averages are better than the extremes. Moreover, we note that the
above assumptions on the cost functions and their expressions are not unreasonable
since we are dealing with continuous variables. Similar assumptions have been made
in several network-based optimization model (see, for instance, [5, 6, 12, 13]).
We have the following result (see, for instance, [13]).
Theorem 1 A vector (X, Y, Z) ∈ K is an optimal solution to the problem (1)–(9) if
and only if there exist the Lagrange multiplier vectors λ1∗ ∈ R+ and λ2∗ ∈ RK
+ such
An Optimization Model for Service Requests Management in a 5G Network. . . 91

that the vector (X, Y, Z, λ1∗ , λ2∗ ) ∈ K × R+ × RK+ is a solution to the variational
inequality:
Find (X, Y, Z, λ1∗ , λ2∗ ) ∈ K × R+ × RK + such that:


G  K 
U  ∗ )
∂cgu (Xgu ∗
× (xguk − xguk )
∂xguk
g=1 u=1 k=1
⎡  
U   K ∂c (Y ) ∂c (E)
Y ∗ˆ ∂qk (Y ∗ , Z ∗ )
⎢ ufˆ ufˆ fˆ f
+ ⎣ + − ρk − αk
∂yufˆk ∂yufˆk ∂yufˆk
f ∈F̂1
u=1 ˆ k=1

∗ ∗
2∗ ∂qk (Y , Z )
−λk × (yufˆk − y ∗ ˆ )
∂yufˆk uf k

⎡  
∂cuf˜ (Z ∗ ˜ ) ∂c ˜ Z ∗˜ ∂cf˜ (Z ∗˜ )
(E)
U   K
∂qk (Y ∗ , Z ∗ )
+ ⎣ uf
+
f f
+
f
− αk − ρk
∂zuf˜k ∂zuf˜k ∂zuf˜k ∂zuf˜k
f ∈F̃2
u=1 ˜ k=1


∂cf˜ (Z ∗˜ ) ∂qk (Y ∗ , Z ∗ )
× (zuf˜k − zu∗f˜k )
f
+λ 1∗
− λ2∗
k
∂zuf˜k ∂zuf˜k
⎡ ⎤
  
⎢ ⎥
+ ⎣B − cf˜ Zf∗˜ ⎦ × (λ1 − λ1∗ )
f˜∈F̃2


K
   
+ qk Y ∗ , Z ∗ − Qk × (λ2k − λ2∗
k ) ≥ 0,
k=1

∀(X, Y, Z, λ1 , λ2 ) ∈ K × R+ × RK
+. (10)

where
!
K := (X, Y, Z) ∈ RGU
+
K+U F̂1 K+U F̃2 K
: (2) − (6) hold true . (11)

We now put variational inequality (10) into standard form, that is: determine
X∗ ∈ K such that:

F (X∗ ), X − X∗  ≥ 0, ∀X ∈ K (12)

where ·, · denotes the inner product in the Euclidean space

RGU
+
K+U F̂1 K+U F̃2 K+1+K
, X ≡ (X1 , X2 , X3 , λ1 , λ2 ), F is a given function
92 G. Colajanni and D. Sciacca

from K to RGU +
K+U F̂1 K+U F̃2 K+1+K
and K is a closed and convex set. We
put N = GU K + U F̂1 K + U F̃2 K + 1 + K and we define the N-dimensional
column vector X = (X1 , X2 , X3 , λ1 , λ2 ) and the N-dimensional column
vector F (X) = (F 1 (X), F 2 (X), F 3 (X), F 4 (X), F 5 (X)), where the (g, u, k)-th
1 , of F 1 (X) is given by
component, Fguk

∂cgu (Xgu )
1
Fguk = ,
∂xguk

the (u, fˆ, k)-th component, F 2 ˆ , of F 2 (X) is given by

uf k
 
∂cufˆ (Yufˆ ) ∂c(E)
ˆ
Yfˆ ∂qk (Y, Z) ∂qk (Y, Z)
f
F2 ˆ = + − ρk − αk − λ2∗
k ,
uf k ∂yufˆk ∂yufˆk ∂yufˆk ∂xufˆk

the (u, f˜, k)-th component, F 3 ˜ , of F 3 (X) is given by

uf k
 
(E)
∂cuf˜ (Zuf˜ ) ∂c ˜ Zf˜ ∂cf˜ (Zf˜ ) ∂qk (Y, Z)
f
Fu3f˜k = + + − αk − ρk
∂zuf˜k ∂zuf˜k ∂zuf˜k ∂xuf˜k
∂cf˜ (Zf˜ ) ∂qk (Y, Z)
+ λ1∗ − λ2∗
k ,
∂zuf˜k ∂zuf˜k

the component F 4 is given by

  
F4 = B − cf˜ Zf˜
f˜∈F̃2

and, finally, the k-component, Fk5 , of F 5 (X) is given by

Fk5 = qk (Y, Z) − Qk ,

and the feasible set K is defined as K.

Since the feasible set K is convex and compact, to obtain an existence result for
a solution to variational inequality (10), we have to impose that function F is a
continuous function.
Following the classical theory of variational inequalities (see, for instance, [11]),
we have the following existence result:
Theorem 2 (Existence) If K is compact and convex and F is a continuous function
on K, then variational inequality (10) admits at least a solution.
An Optimization Model for Service Requests Management in a 5G Network. . . 93

Moreover, we have the following uniqueness result:

Theorem 3 (Uniqueness) Under the assumptions of Theorem 2, if the function
F (X) in (12) is strictly monotone on K, that is:

(F (X1 ) − F (X2 ))T , X1 − X2  > 0, ∀X1 , X2 ∈ K, X1 = X2 ,

then variational inequality (12) or, equivalently, variational inequality (10), admits
a unique solution.

4 An Illustrative Numerical Example

In this Section, we solve an illustrative numerical example to validate the effec-

tiveness of the model. We consider G=5 users or devices on the ground, U = 2
controller UAVs, F̂1 = 3 pre-existing UAVs, F̃2 = 2 additional UAVs and K = 1
type of services. The optimal solution are computed through the Euler Method (see
[7] for a detailed description) using the Matlab program on an HP laptop with an
AMD compute cores 2C+3G processor, 8 GB RAM. The numerical data and the
size of the problem are constructed for easy interpretation purposes. We have the
following example’s data:

ρ1 = 17, α1 = 5, Q1 = 60, ; R11 = 10, R21 = R31 = 15, R41 = 12, R51 = 10;

S 1 = 27, S 2 = 37, s1 = 2; S1 = S2 = S3 = S4 = S5 = 30.

The parameters of the transmission cost of the service requests from users or
devices to controller UAVs, from controller UAVs to any pre-existing UAV and any
additional UAV functions are reported in Table 3 and we also assume:

η = κ  = μ = 1; δ =  = 0.3; δ  =   = 1.

Reminding that the cost due to add a new UAV at the highest level of the network
is given by:
2

2 
2
cf˜ (Xf3˜ ) = β xuf˜1 + β xuf˜1 , ∀f˜ ∈ F̃2 ,
u=1 u=1

we conduct a sensitivity analysis, therefore we suppose 21 different scenarios,

varying the parameters β and β  of the cost function for adding new UAVs, and
the maximum available budget for additional UAVs, B.
In Table 4, for each scenario, we reported: the main optimal solutions, that are
z∗ ˜ , the quantities of service requests sent by each controller UAV to the additional
uf k
UAVs which the provider can decide to activate; cadd , the sum of the terms of the
 94

Table 3 Used parameters of the transmission cost functions: η, κ and μ

g=1 g=2 g=3 g=4 g=5 fˆ = 1 fˆ = 2 fˆ = 3 f˜ = 1 f˜ = 2
u=1 η = 0.2 η = 0.2 η = 0.2 η = 0.3 η = 0.3 κ = 0.3 κ = 0.2 κ = 0.2 μ = 0.3 μ = 0.8
u=2 η = 0.3 η = 0.3 η = 0.3 η = 0.2 η = 0.2 κ = 0.8 κ = 0.3 κ = 0.2 μ = 0.2 μ = 0.3
G. Colajanni and D. Sciacca
Table 4 Optimal solutions (z∗ ˜ ), additional costs (cadd ) and computational times (t) for each scenario
uf k
Parameters B = 60 B = 45 B = 30
z111 z121 z211 z221 cadd t (s) z111 z121 z211 z221 cadd t (s) z111 z121 z211 z221 cadd t (s)
β = β = 0 6.32 3.46 9.3 9.2 0 0.72 6.32 3.46 9.3 9.2 0 0.59 6.32 3.46 9.3 9.2 0 0.63
β = 0.5, β  = 0.1 3.18 1.94 4.69 5.17 57.72 1.56 2.78 1.72 4.11 4.59 45 1.5 2.25 1.41 3.32 3.77 30 0.43
β = 1, β  = 0.2 2.12 1.34 3.12 3.56 53.5 0.97 1.93 1.23 2.85 3.27 45 0.89 1.56 1 2.3 2.68 30 1.45
β = 2, β  = 0.4 1.28 0.82 1.84 2.18 30.89 1.18 1.28 0.82 1.84 2.18 30.89 2.02 1.12 0.72 1.57 1.89 29.98 8.78
β = 3, β  = 0.6 0.91 0.59 1.29 1.56 30.93 2.9 0.91 0.59 1.29 1.56 30.93 6.07 0.9 0.58 1.27 1.53 29.98 9.42
β = 5, β  = 1 0.64 0.45 0.78 0.94 22.78 6.84 0.65 0.45 0.78 0.94 22.78 6.5 0.65 0.45 0.78 0.94 22.78 6.4
β = 35, β  = 20 0 0 0 0 0 8.48 0 0 0 0 0 9.7 0 0 0 0 0 8.81
An Optimization Model for Service Requests Management in a 5G Network. . .
95
96 G. Colajanni and D. Sciacca

10 Sensitivity analysis: main optimal solutions

— —
8 z111, B = 60 z211, B = 60
— —
z111, B = 45 z211, B = 45
— —
z111, B = 30 z211, B = 30
— —
z121, B = 60 z221, B = 60
6 — —
z121, B = 45 z221, B = 45
— —
z121, B = 30 z221, B = 30

20
10
00 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
b1
b

Fig. 2 Main optimal solutions zuf˜k under sensitivity analysis

objective function concerning the cost due to add new UAVs at the highest level of
the network (that must be less than or equal to B, the maximum available budget for
adding new UAVs, as established by constraint (7)), and the computational time (in
seconds) required to solve the scenario.
The optimal solutions, shown in Table 4 and in Fig. 2, clearly express a
decreasing trend as the parameters of the cost functions increase. Particularly, at
β = β  = 0, we obtain maximum values of zuf˜k , while at β = 35 and β  = 20, we
obtain that no additional UAVs are used because to add new UAVs is too expensive.
Note that the trend of the curves is the same as the maximum budget varies and the
budget constraint is always respected.

5 Conclusion

In this paper, we presented a supply chain network optimization model for the
providing 5G network slices on demand to users and devices on the ground. We
considered a three-tier supply chain consisting of a fleet of UAVs organized as a
FANET, managed by the UAVs controllers, with the possibility to add additional
UAVs to pre-existing ones. We proposed a system optimization perspective for the
An Optimization Model for Service Requests Management in a 5G Network. . . 97

entire supply chain network in which services provider solves a maximization profit
problem. We obtained a constrained optimization problem for which we derive the
associated variational inequality formulation. Also, qualitative properties in terms
of existence and uniqueness of the solution were provided. Finally, an illustrative
numerical example was performed to validate the effectiveness of the model.
The model previously described can certainly be extended. In our future work,
we are considering a closed-loop network in which users or devices on the ground
receive the performed services, introducing the reliability level of the entire network
and the related damage in case of services not performed. Furthermore, we are
working on a more comprehensive model, in which we introduce a set of Time
Slots, a bigger area to be covered and, therefore, a new heuristic to solve numerical
examples on large instances.

Acknowledgments The research was partially supported by the research project “Programma
ricerca di ateneo UNICT 2020-22 linea 2-OMNIA” of Catania. This support is gratefully
acknowledged.

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A MIP Model for Freight Consolidation
in Road Transportation Considering
Outsourced Fleet

Thiago Vieira and Pedro Munari

Abstract We address the freight consolidation problem under the context of road
transportation with outsourced fleet, motivated by the real-life situation faced by a
major manufacturer of school supplies located in Brazil. Given a set of shipments
scheduled for the next few days, and a set of available vehicles at the carriers,
the company has to determine how to best assign shipments to vehicles in a way
to minimize the total transportation cost. This is a challenging case of vehicle
consolidation, in which each carrier has a complex pricing table that follows
particular rules, rates and taxes. Prices are defined according to the vehicle type
(heterogeneous fleet), number of deliveries (visits to redispatching points) and the
individual price and weight of items in the shipments consolidated in the truck.
These components cause a piecewise linear behavior of the cost function, which
makes the consolidation even more difficult. To aid this decision-making process,
we propose a mixed-integer linear programming (MIP) model that fully represents
the problem. We are not aware of any other model or solution strategy that includes
all the features observed in the addressed situation. The results of computational
experiments using real-life instances provided by the manufacturer show the benefits
of using the proposed model in practice, as we observed reductions of more than
44% in comparison to the freight consolidation policy of the company.

Keywords Freight consolidation · Piecewise linear function · Mixed-integer

linear optimization

1 Introduction

Freight (or shipment) consolidation is an essential practice in logistics operations,

being widely used in transportation modes [17]. It consists of combining different
items, produced and used at different locations and times with the same destination,

T. Vieira () · P. Munari

Department of Production Engineering, Federal University of São Carlos, São Carlos, Brazil
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 99

A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_8
100 T. Vieira and P. Munari

into single container or truck loads, in a way to reduce transportation expenditures

by taking advantage of economies of scale, better organize the deliveries, minimize
damages to the customers and provide greater inventory control [4, 9].
Freight consolidation can be classified based on the supply chain planning
hierarchy, mainly into strategic and operational levels [15]. The strategic level
concerns the design of distribution networks, involving definitions of factors such
as the quantity, the location and the processing capacity of each distribution center
(DC), with the aim of minimizing the long-term overall costs [1, 5, 12]. On the
other hand, operational level deals with the planning and execution of goods
distribution considering an existing network configuration. [18] presented a model
to minimize costs and carbon dioxide emissions in long-haul transportation by
freight consolidation. [13] proposed a look-ahead heuristic that achieves economy of
scale by shipping larger quantities in a system with stochastic demand and a single
consolidation point near the suppliers. [16] introduced a nonlinear optimization
model to coordinate shipments between suppliers and customers through a DC.
Other freight consolidation models at the operational level can be found in [3, 14]
and [6].
In a more practical perspective, [10] and [11] classify the consolidation strategies
according to three types: inventory (or temporal), vehicle, terminal. Inventory
consolidation creates a stock of items by holding shipments until reaching a
minimum load size. In vehicle consolidation, small load shipments are picked up
and dropped off along a multi-stop route by the same vehicle, in a way that the
combined big loads maximize the utilization of the resource. Finally, terminal
consolidation collects items from different origins to a transshipment center and
group them into larger shipments based on their destinations (e.g., break-bulk or
cross-docking practices).
In this paper, we address freight consolidation at operational level, under vehicle
and temporal strategies, for effective road transportation using outsourced fleet. We
consider the real-life decision-making process faced by the logistics department of
a manufacturer of school supplies located in Brazil. In short, in the company’s
operation, the cargo is shipped from their DC by collection carriers, hired by the
company, and then proceeds to the DCs of redispatch carriers, which are hired by
the customers and are fully responsible for delivering the goods to them. Given the
orders scheduled for the next days and the available fleet of the collection carriers,
the company has to decide how to best consolidate these orders and assign them to
vehicles, in a way to minimize the total transportation cost from its DC to the DCs
of the redispatch carriers. The difficulty in this decision making process comes from
the large number of orders and the big variety of vehicles and carriers, and from the
limited processing capacity at the DCs. Additionally, the collection carriers have
complex pricing tables, based on vehicle types, number of deliveries of a vehicle,
and the individual price and weight of items. This causes a nonlinear structure in
the total transportation cost, which brings additional challenges for modeling and
solving the problem.
We propose a mixed-integer linear programming (MIP) model for minimizing
the total transportation cost in the scope of the addressed situation, considering an
A MIP Model for Freight Consolidation in Road Transportation Considering. . . 101

extension of the Variable Sized Bin-Packing Problem (VSBPP) [8], which is an NP-
hard combinatorial optimization problem that consists of determining the optimal
arrangement of smaller units (items) within larger units (bins) [7]. The proposed
model and the analyses presented in this paper can benefit companies with a similar
situation, as well as be extended to other situations related to freight consolidation
using outsourced fleet and a nonlinear cost structure.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In Sect. 2 we describe the
problem and in Sect. 3 we introduce a new MIP formulation. In Sect. 4, we show
the results of computational experiments using real-life data and, lastly, in Sect. 5
we present our conclusions and the next steps.

2 Problem Description

As mentioned before, we consider the case of a company that operates in the

printing industry, specifically in the stationery segment (school, office, calendar
and household supplies), located in São Paulo, Brazil. The final products are
stored in the company’s DC, where freight consolidation and other inventory
management activities are fulfilled. Then, collection carriers transfer loads to the
DCs of redispatch carriers, which are then finally delivered to the customers. The
manufacturer covers the transportation expenses only between its DC and the DCs of
the redispatch carriers and, hence, it is a Free on Board (FOB) redispatch operation.
The processing capacity at the company’s DC regarding the collection of goods must
not exceed 90 ton/day. The redispatch carriers also impose a processing capacity
and, thus, the company assumes the standard limitation of 36 ton/day per carrier.
The addressed problem can be seen as an extension of the VSBPP, in which
carriers’ vehicles correspond to the bins, items refer to the goods to be dispatched
(represented by orders), and the utility of each bin is determined by a piecewise
linear function that depends on the items allocated to the bin. This piecewise linear
function results from the rules used by the collection carriers in their pricing tables.
They are established by contracts between the company and the carriers and cannot
be easily changed.
The pricing table defines the transportation cost of each order assigned to a
vehicle, based on the individual cost and weight of the goods and on the total number
of visits to the DCs of redispatch carriers. Thus, the transportation cost of an order
depends not only on its attributes (cost and weight) but also on the number of visits
of the vehicle to which the order is assigned to. Therefore, the consolidation must
take into account that the larger the number of visits made by a vehicle, the larger
the carrier charges will be, for each order assigned to that vehicle.
Table 1 illustrates how a pricing table is often structured. In this example, there
are two available vehicle types (Box Truck 14-ton and Semitrailer 24-ton), both
offered by the same collection carrier. Each vehicle type has a price range that
depends on the number of deliveries, and this range is defined by the bounds DL
and DU. A price range can be composed of subranges based on the weight of items
102 T. Vieira and P. Munari

Table 1 Example of the pricing table of a collection carrier

Vehicle Price Price
type range DL DU subrange WL WU Cost A Cost B ...
Box Truck 7 1 6 1 0 ∞ 0.13 57.22 ...
14-ton
8 7 ∞ 1 0 ∞ 0.18 55.00 ...
Semitrailer 9 1 6 1 0 ∞ 0.15 37.61 ...
24-ton
10 7 20 1 0 50 26.95 57.22 ...
2 51 100 32.60 55.00 ...
3 101 ∞ 0.24 57.22 ...

in an order (defined by WL and WU), and for each subrange there is an associated
price (Cost A , Cost B , . . . ). Let us assume that the values in bold in column Cost A
are rates based on the weight of an order, whereas the remaining values in this
column and in column Cost B are fixed costs (i.e., they do not depend on weights).
This definition of ranges and subranges cause the piecewise linear behavior of the
transportation cost. For example, if we assign a vehicle of type Box Truck 14-ton to
execute a route with 5 deliveries, it falls in the price range 7 (1 to 6 visits). Then, the
cost applied to each order assigned to this vehicle is 0.13wi + 57.22 + . . . , where
wi is the weight of order i. Observe that in this price range, wi is unbounded (as
W U = ∞). However, if we assign a vehicle type Semitrailer 24-ton to a route in
which the number of deliveries falls between 7 and 20 (price range 10), then the cost
of an order is computed based on its total weight: if it has 50 Kg or less, then we
apply the cost 26.95 + 57.22 + . . . ; whereas if it has more than 50 Kg, but not more
than 100 Kg, we apply 32.60 + 55.00 + . . . ; and finally, if it has more than 100 Kg,
we apply 0.24wi + 57.22 + . . . .
To effectively include these costs in the MIP model, we propose in the next
section a way to linearize the transportation cost function. This is done by
incorporating one additional index into variables and parameters, to explicitly state
the price subrange that is chosen for a vehicle. Finally, to avoid the risk of a possible
reformulation of the contract, disinterest in the provision of service by any carrier,
or even for the total break of the partnership, the company has to ensure a minimum
occupancy volume factor for each vehicle, i.e., OC = loading/capacity.

3 Mathematical Formulation

Consider a set of n orders, denoted as N = {1, . . . , n}, and the set of time periods
T representing the time horizon considered in the problem. The orders have to be
dispatched from the company’s DC to the DCs of m redispatch carriers denoted by
the set M = {1, . . . , m}. Let V be the set of available vehicles at the collection
carriers. We define Ij ⊂ N as the subset of orders whose destination is the DC of
A MIP Model for Freight Consolidation in Road Transportation Considering. . . 103

the redispatch carrier j ∈ M. Additionally, let Fv be the set of price ranges that
applies for vehicle v ∈ V, according to the pricing table of the collection carrier
that owns this vehicle. To guarantee a satisfactory occupation level in the vehicles,
we allow orders to be rejected in a solution of the model, as an artifice to postpone
such orders to a subsequent planning (e.g., a next run of the model, using a forward
time horizon). To prevent the rejection of orders with short due dates, we define the
subset NR ⊂ N of orders that cannot be rejected in a solution of the model. We
further define the following input parameters:
– wi : weight of order i (in kilograms);
– T C if : total unit transportation cost for order i and price range f ;
– P Ccol: processing capacity of company’s DC in Kg/day;
– P Cred j : processing capacity of the redispatch carrier j in Kg/day;
– W LC v : weight capacity of vehicle v in (in kilograms);
– OC: minimum occupancy volume factor of the vehicles, given in percentage;
– DLf : minimum number of deliveries allowed when choosing price range f ;
– DU f : maximum number of deliveries allowed when choosing price range f ;
– Due i : maximum period for shipping the order i.
Since consolidation represents the total loading assigned to a vehicle, according
to a certain price range, the following decision variables are defined:
"
1, if order i is assigned to price range f of vehicle v in period t;
– xif vt =
0, otherwise.
"
1, if price range f of vehicle v in period t is activated;
– uf vt =
0, otherwise.
⎧
⎪
⎪
⎨1, if the redispatch carrier j is visited by vehicle v with price
– zjf vt = range f in period t;
⎪
⎪
⎩0, otherwise.
– si : continuous variable that assumes the value of 1 if order i is not allocated to
any vehicle (allowing postponement of orders for subsequent planning), and 0
otherwise.
The optimization criterion of this approach seeks to minimize the total transporta-
tion cost. Moreover, we define T Cmax i = 2 maxf {T C if } in a way to penalize
each rejected order. This definition is an artificial cost that, in practice, should be
estimated empirically. Using the defined parameters and decision variables, we state
the following MIP model for the addressed freight consolidation problem:
   
min T C if xif vt + T Cmax i si (3.1)
t ∈T v∈V f ∈Fv i∈N i∈N
 
s.t. xif vt + si = 1; ∀ i ∈ N ; (3.2)
t ∈T v∈V f ∈Fv
104 T. Vieira and P. Munari


uf vt ≤ 1; ∀ v ∈ V; t ∈ T ; (3.3)
f ∈Fv
  
wi xif vt ≤ P Ccol; ∀ t ∈ T ; (3.4)
v∈V f ∈Fv i∈N
  
wi xif vt ≤ P Cred j ; ∀ j ∈ M; t ∈ T ; (3.5)
v∈V f ∈Fv i∈Ij

(OC.W LC v )uf vt ≤ wi xif vt ≤ W LC v uf vt ;
i∈N

∀ f ∈ Fv ; v ∈ V; t ∈ T ; (3.6)
xif vt ≤ zjf vt ; ∀ i ∈ Ij ; j ∈ M; f ∈ Fv ; v ∈ V; t ∈ T ; (3.7)

zjf vt ≤ xif vt ; ∀ j ∈ M; f ∈ Fv ; v ∈ V; t ∈ T ; (3.8)
i∈Ij

DLf uf vt ≤ zjf vt ≤ DU f ; ∀ f ∈ Fv ; v ∈ V; t ∈ T ; (3.9)
j ∈M
     
wi xif v,t −1 ≥ wi xif vt ; ∀ t ∈ T | t > 1; (3.10)
v∈V f ∈Fv i∈N v∈V f ∈Fv i∈N

xif vt = 0; ∀ i ∈ N ; f ∈ Fv ; v ∈ V; t ∈ T | t > Duei ; (3.11)

si = 0; ∀ i ∈ N | i ∈ NR; (3.12)
xif vt ∈ {0, 1}; ∀ i ∈ N ; f ∈ Fv ; v ∈ V; t ∈ T ; (3.13)
uf vt ∈ {0, 1}; ∀ f ∈ Fv ; v ∈ V; t ∈ T ; (3.14)
zjf vt ∈ {0, 1}; ∀ j ∈ M; f ∈ Fv ; v ∈ V; t ∈ T ; (3.15)
si ≥ 0; ∀ i ∈ N . (3.16)

The objective function (3.1) represents the trade-off between minimizing the
total transportation cost and maximizing of the occupancy volume of a vehicle
by penalizing orders rejections. If the problem was originally feasible in relation
to a complete assignment of orders to vehicles, in an optimal solution we have
n
i=1 T Cmax i si = 0. As mentioned before, a feasible solution with rejected orders
means that these orders were not allocated to a vehicle in this particular solution,
and hence they should be included in a future planning, in another execution of
the model. Constraints (3.2) ensure that an order i is allocated to at most one price
range f of vehicle v in time period t. The use of si enables the rejection of an
order if the satisfactory occupation of the vehicles cannot be achieved, meaning the
this order will be considered in a subsequent run of the model. Constraints (3.3)
guarantee that only a single price range f can be associated with each vehicle v in
period t, activating variable uf vt if i∈N xif vt > 0. Constraints (3.4) and (3.5)
A MIP Model for Freight Consolidation in Road Transportation Considering. . . 105

enforce the processing capacities of the company’s DC (90 ton/day) and of the
DCs of redispatch carriers (36 ton/day per carrier), and constraints (3.6) enforce the
minimum occupation and maximum capacity of each vehicle v. Constraints (3.7)–
(3.9) concern the number of visits of a vehicle, given by the number of different
redispatch carriers in a consolidation, where constraints (3.7) and (3.8) ensure that
i∈Ij xif vt > 0 if, and only if, zjf vt = 1, whereas constraints (3.9) relate the
number of visits with the price ranges. Constraints (3.10) prevent solution symmetry
in the model, as there is no difference in the assignment of orders in relation to
periods of time. Constraints (3.11) and (3.12) guarantee that no order is allocated
after the delivery due date and that orders that cannot be rejected must be fulfilled
in the planning in question, respectively. Finally, constraints (3.13)–(3.16) impose
the domain of decision variables. Note that we do not need to define variable si
as binary, as constraints (3.2) and (3.13) preserve its domain in a feasible solution.
The usage of the index f to differentiate the price ranges and of variable uf vt in
the bounds of constraints (3.6) and (3.9), allowed us to completely linearize the
transportation cost function that was originally piecewise linear [2, 19].

4 Computational Experiments

The proposed MIP model was coded in C++ language, using the API Concert
Technology of the IBM CPLEX Optimization Studio v.12.9. We ran computational
experiments using data provided by the company, based on their operation history
of a month with high demand of goods (September). We created three independent
classes of instances, named hereafter as Classes 1, 3 and 5. Instances in Class 1 are
defined by orders dispatched on a single day, resulting in 30 different instances in
which T = {1}; instances in Class 3 comprises orders of three consecutive days
of operation and thus we obtained 10 instances with T = {1, 2, 3}; and Class
5 has six instances with T = {1, . . . , 5}. We considered a total of 25 available
vehicles (|V|) from three different collection carriers, and an occupancy volume
factor OC = 90%. All experiments were performed on a PC with an Intel(R) Core
i7 4790K 3.6 GHz CPU and 16 GB of RAM. We imposed a time limit of 1 hour and
kept the default tolerance of CPLEX for the relative optimality gap (0.01%).
Table 2 presents the results of solving the proposed model using the general-
purpose MIP solver of CPLEX. The first two columns show the instance name and
its total number of orders (|N |). The third column presents the actual company’s
transportation cost to dispatch the accepted orders in the instance (CostnA ). The
remaining nine columns refer to the solution obtained by the model and show
the number of accepted orders in the solution (nA), number of rejected orders
(nR), the lower (OFlb ) and upper (OFub ) bounds, the relative gap computed as
100%.(OFub -OFlb )/(OFub +10−10 ), objective function value for accepted orders of
the instance (OFnA ), the percentage of cost reduction in the objective function with
respected to the company’s cost (RD), computed as 100%.(OFnA-CostnA )/CostnA ,
computational time in seconds (CPUt) and the average vehicle’s occupancy volume
Table 2 Computational results of the proposed model
106

Instance Company Optimization model

Name |N | CostnA nA nR OFlb OFub Gap (%) OFnA RD (%) CPUt AOC (%)
09_01 105 35,775.10 105 0 16,348.05 16,349.08 0.006 16,349.08 −54.30 66.10 97.67
09_02 208 33,229.18 208 0 20,135.05 20,158.90 0.118 20,158.90 −39.33 3,602.63 95.68
09_03 272 43,137.12 272 0 24,232.34 24,234.77 0.010 24,234.77 −43.82 260.67 92.35
09_04 164 31,130.22 164 0 18,436.33 18,437.91 0.009 18,437.91 −40.77 248.42 97.33
09_05 215 39,622.24 215 0 19,968.48 19,969.91 0.007 19,969.91 −49.60 112.30 92.61
09_06 112 25,678.10 112 0 16,205.72 16,206.68 0.006 16,206.68 −36.89 130.35 97.25
09_07 119 29,425.97 119 0 16,710.07 16,711.30 0.007 16,711.30 −43.21 125.45 97.48
09_08 111 29,483.12 111 0 16,127.74 16,129.36 0.010 16,129.36 −45.29 187.88 95.52
09_09 145 46,784.97 145 0 17,446.33 17,446.72 0.002 17,446.72 −62.71 218.19 91.17
09_10 132 27,307.04 132 0 16,262.81 16,264.21 0.009 16,264.21 −40.44 437.14 95.00
09_11 93 29,949.03 93 0 15,126.45 15,127.89 0.010 15,127.89 −49.49 159.53 97.05
09_12 118 28,102.72 118 0 16,180.90 16,182.48 0.010 16,182.48 −42.42 294.97 96.13
09_13 62 17,915.87 62 0 13,750.60 13,751.64 0.008 13,751.64 −23.24 19.29 97.38
09_14 143 31,087.49 143 0 18,348.04 18,349.88 0.010 18,349.88 −40.97 144.19 94.49
09_15 188 37,873.69 188 0 19,197.12 19,199.03 0.010 19,199.03 −49.31 94.52 95.73
09_16 149 31,886.92 149 0 17,816.87 17,818.65 0.010 17,818.65 −44.12 598.70 95.58
09_17 137 27,315.95 137 0 16,819.37 16,821.03 0.010 16,821.03 −38.42 48.06 97.41
09_18 152 30,910.19 152 0 17,704.28 17,704.78 0.003 17,704.78 −42.72 16.94 95.69
09_19 131 28,485.88 131 0 16,989.17 17,032.77 0.256 17,032.77 −40.21 3,600.77 94.31
09_20 110 25,931.25 110 0 16,142.96 16,144.58 0.010 16,144.58 −37.74 128.82 98.65
09_21 198 56,898.09 198 0 19,102.42 19,104.31 0.010 19,104.31 −66.42 96.27 95.61
09_22 197 36,528.67 197 0 19,485.18 19,487.13 0.010 19,487.13 −46.65 537.24 95.72
09_23 138 31,228.36 138 0 17,394.85 17,396.59 0.010 17,396.59 −44.29 122.18 94.74
(continued)
T. Vieira and P. Munari
09_24 100 22,787.24 100 0 15,181.43 15,182.89 0.010 15,182.89 −33.37 262.75 94.83
09_25 153 39,334.95 153 0 17,620.65 17,622.40 0.010 17,622.40 −55.20 116.27 98.10
09_26 111 29,124.36 111 0 16,508.78 16,510.43 0.010 16,510.43 −43.31 46.01 94.65
09_27 105 27,354.90 105 0 16,347.13 16,348.76 0.010 16,348.76 −40.23 223.97 95.21
09_28 112 28,042.07 112 0 16,067.18 16,068.78 0.010 16,068.78 −42.70 1,837.88 97.19
09_29 116 26,944.13 116 0 16,481.21 16,482.79 0.010 16,482.79 −38.83 128.28 98.76
09_30 173 33,835.18 173 0 18,408.10 18,409.82 0.009 18,409.82 −45.59 24.91 95.28
Avg 142.3 32,103.67 142.3 0 17,418.19 17,421.85 0.021 17,421.85 −44.05 463.02 95.82
09_01-03 585 112,141.40 580 0 53,659.20 58,502.94 8.279 58,502.94 −47.83 3,601.17 95.57
09_04-06 491 96,430.56 491 0 49,125.70 54,586.87 10.005 54,586.87 −43.39 3,602.82 94.02
09_07-09 375 105,694.06 375 0 46,380.56 47,652.74 2.670 47,652.74 −54.91 3,602.01 96.79
09_10-12 343 85,358.79 343 0 44,789.29 45,790.40 2.186 45,790.40 −46.36 3,601.91 96.77
09_13-15 393 86,877.05 393 0 46,225.43 47,831.12 3.357 47,831.12 −44.94 3,602.49 96.55
09_16-18 438 90,113.06 438 0 47,665.25 51,370.45 7.213 51,370.45 −42.99 3,604.96 96.56
09_19-21 439 111,315.22 439 0 47,734.06 53,403.20 10.616 53,403.20 −52.03 3,602.46 95.82
09_22-24 435 90,544.27 435 0 46,969.37 49,168.21 4.472 49,168.21 −45.70 3,602.73 96.48
09_25-27 369 95,814.21 369 0 45,693.03 49,297.49 7.312 49,297.49 −48.55 3,602.32 93.94
09_28-30 401 88,821.38 401 0 46,995.67 50,017.25 6.041 50,017.25 −43.69 3,606.07 97.76
Avg 426.9 96,311.00 426.4 0 47,523.76 50,762.07 6.215 50,762.07 −47.04 3,602.89 96.03
09_01-05 964 114,992.44 512 452 86,787.15 246,297.73 64.763 64,524.29 −43.89 3,601.00 97.56
09_06-10 619 123,988.01 412 207 73,856.77 157,017.04 52.963 61,053.14 −50.76 3,600.63 94.50
09_11-15 604 120,183.53 473 131 73,684.87 9.77E+07 99.925 66,234.27 −44.89 3,604.97 95.52
A MIP Model for Freight Consolidation in Road Transportation Considering. . .

09_16-20 679 113,668.80 500 179 75,831.27 1.42E+08 99.947 62,474.83 −45.04 3,605.45 94.09
09_21-25 786 132,915.59 439 347 79,712.96 208,061.22 61.688 57,446.64 −56.78 3,604.91 98.45
09_26-30 617 117,909.96 448 169 73,946.11 1.29E+08 99.943 62,078.60 −47.35 3,604.95 95.54
Avg 711.5 120,609.72 464 247.5 77,303.19 6.16E+07 79.871 62,301.96 −48.12 3,603.65 95.94
107
108 T. Vieira and P. Munari

(AOC). In addition to the results for each instance, Table 2 shows at the end of each
class the average values for the instances in the class. It is worth mentioning that the
rejected orders are those not allocated to a vehicle in the solution obtained for the
instance. This means that the solver could not find a solution in which all orders are
assigned to vehicles and, therefore, these orders are not fulfilled in this solution. In
our experiments, this situation appears in solutions with large optimality gaps only,
as the solver was not able to find a relatively good solution when the time limit was
reached. For solutions with small gaps, we do not see any rejection, thus all orders
are fulfilled in the time horizon of the instance.
For instances in Class 1, on average, we observe a reduction in the transportation
costs of 44.05%, with an execution time of 463.02 seconds and an occupation of
95.82%. Also, the solution obtained using the model resulted in a reduction greater
than 60% for two instances, namely 09_09 and 09_21. There were no rejected orders
in the instances of this class. Only in two instances CPLEX achieved the time limit
of one hour.
In Class 3, only two instances had a gap below 3%. Although the average gap
was 6.22%, there were no rejected orders and the economy was 47.04% with an
occupancy factor of 96.03%. Note that CPLEX reached the time limit in all instances
in this class. Finally, in Class 5, the difficulty significantly increased, as the average
gap was greater than 50% when CPLEX reached the time limit, and the average
number of rejected orders was 247.5 (34.78% of the total), given that these solutions
have a large optimality gap. Despite that, the corresponding savings were high
(48.12%, on average), and the average occupancy was around 95.94%.
In summary, we notice that the computational difficulty of solving the model with
a larger number of time periods increased significantly. Nevertheless, the solutions
resulted in consolidations that were considerably less costly than the consolidation
carried out by the company.

5 Concluding Remarks

We addressed a freight consolidation problem in road transportation with outsourced

fleet and FOB freight, considering the real-life case of a manufacturer of school
supplies. We proposed a mixed-integer linear optimization model that seeks to
minimizing the total cost of transportation while satisfying all requirements that are
considered relevant by the company. Due to the complex structure of the pricing
tables practiced by the carriers, the transportation cost function has a piecewise
linear structure, which was effectively linearized in the model. The results obtained
by computational experiments with data provided by the company showed average
savings of more than 44% with respect to the history of the company, indicating
that the model has the potential to improve the addressed decision making process.
An interesting next step for this study is to develop MIP-based heuristics using the
proposed formulation, in an attempt to solve instances with larger number of time
periods. Another research topic would be the incorporation of uncertainties into the
model, through stochastic programming or robust optimization.
A MIP Model for Freight Consolidation in Road Transportation Considering. . . 109

Acknowledgments The authors are thankful to the company involved in this study and for
the financial support provided by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível
Superior—Brasil (CAPES) [Finance code 001], the National Council for Scientific and Technolog-
ical Development (CNPq) [grant number 313220/2020-4], and the São Paulo Research Foundation
(FAPESP) [grant numbers 20/11602-5, 19/23596-2 and 16/01860-1].

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 Part IV
Optimization for Control Systems
Energy-Oriented Inter-Vehicle Distance
Optimization for Heterogeneous
E-Platoons

Bianca Caiazzo, Angelo Coppola, Alberto Petrillo, and Stefania Santini

Abstract The development of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) has

the potential to improve the energy efficiency of the transportation system. Since
the inter-vehicle distance plays a crucial role for energy-saving purposes, this paper
proposes a novel optimization algorithm to compute the optimal gap distance in a
heterogeneous platoon of electric CAVs by exploiting a distance-dependent air drag
coefficient formulation. Specifically, the proposed method exploits the leader speed
and acceleration profiles information, as well as road slope one, to compute the
optimal inter-vehicle distance w.r.t. the preceding vehicle so as to reduce the air-drag
coefficient and, hence, reduce energy consumption. The proposed algorithm exploits
Nonlinear Programming method, taking into account safety constraints in order to
avoid collisions among vehicles. The effectiveness of the approach is evaluated
via the Matlab/Simulink simulation platform by considering two driving scenarios,
namely base scenario, where the Constant Time Headway spacing policy is adopted,
and optimized scenario, where the proposed algorithm is exploited to compute the
optimal inter-vehicle distances. Numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the
proposed optimization strategy in reducing energy consumption w.r.t. base scenario.

Keywords Energy efficiency · Nonlinear programming · Spacing policy ·

Heterogeneous platoon

The authors are listed in alphabetic order.

This work was supported by the Regione Campania, Italy, and FCA Group, through P.O.R.
CAMPANIA FSE 2014/2020 CUP E66C18000900002.

B. Caiazzo · A. Coppola () · A. Petrillo · S. Santini

The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
(DIETI), University of Naples Federico II, Napoli, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 113
A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_9
114 B. Caiazzo et al.

1 Introduction

The reduction of energy consumption is a major challenges in automotive field in

order to enhance the environmental impact of mobility ecosystem [10]. Within this
framework, the development of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) have
the potential to enhance energy efficiency [18, 19, 23] by properly adapting their
motion on the basis of surrounding traffic environment information (e.g. status of the
road or of neighboring vehicles) obtained via Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V), Vehicle-to-
Infrastructure (V2I) and/or Vehicle-to-Cloud (V2C) communications technologies
[4–6, 21].
Over the past years, several strategies have been developed to achieve reduction
in energy consumption by dealing with the factors that most affect it, i.e., the
road slope and lead/predecessor vehicle behaviour. Authors in [22] proposed a
distributed control framework aiming at reduce fuel consumption by operating all
vehicles at a fuel-optimal speed profile, while in [1] an eco look-ahead controller
predicting the optimum speed and acceleration profile on the basis of roadway slope
for the lead vehicle of a platoon was developed. Due to its ability to take into
account for different features at same time, MPC is widely used for optimization
problems. For example, authors in [27] proposed a receding-horizon optimization
based MPC taking into account for the previewed road slopes, while in [30] a
Nonlinear MPC (NMPC) exploiting both terrain and preceding vehicle information
was used. Furthermore, another crucial aspect in the dynamic behavior of platoon is
related to inter-vehicle distance. Indeed, it is well known that smaller inter-vehicle
gap can strongly reduce the aerodynamic drag, thus obtaining better performances
in terms of energy consumption [2]. Common spacing policies, such as Constant
Spacing-Policy (CS) and Constant Time-Headway Policy (CTH), require followers
speed to converge the leader behavior in the time-domain. However, these spacing
policies are typically used when constant references behaviour have to be track,
while, in many practical situation, the reference speed signal could vary in spatial
domain [3]. This consideration leads to the need of new energy-optimized spacing
policies. Along this line, authors in [3] proposed a delay-dependent spacing policy
allowing all vehicles within the platoon to track the same spatially varying reference
speed profile. By considering also the road slope profile, authors in [26] compute the
energy-optimal speed profile by exploiting Dynamic Programming and propose a
variable spacing strategy based on the geometry relationship of each vehicle driving
at optimal speed and its ideal speed under the CS policy.
This paper proposes an optimization procedure allowing to improve energy
consumption of each vehicle within the platoon by acting on air-drag coefficient
reduction, which vary as a function of inter-vehicle distance. Specifically, given
optimal driving profile of the leader and a PI control strategy to ensure that followers
track this desired energy-oriented behaviour, the proposed algorithm can improve
energy performances by computing the optimal gap distances for each vehicles
within the platoon w.r.t. its predecessor via Nonlinear Programming (NLP) Tool.
Since the inter-vehicle distance should be as small possible in order to reduce
Energy-Oriented Inter-Vehicle Distance Optimization for Heterogeneous E-Platoons 115

aerodynamic drag, which decreases energy consumption, while a minimal spacing

can increase the occurrence of collision among vehicles, safety constraints have
been also embedded in the proposed strategy. Moreover, to avoid a continuous opti-
mization procedure that might produce undesirable fast varying signal, the algorithm
provides a suitable criterion to determine when the optimization procedure has to be
run based on significant variation in driving and road slope profile.
Finally, the paper is organized as follows. In Sect. 2 we present vehicles, battery
and consumption models, while the proposed optimization procedure is presented
in Sect. 3. The effectiveness of the approach via numerical analysis is presented in
Sect. 4, while conclusions are reported in Sect. 5.

2 Problem Statement

Consider N autonomous Electric Vehicles (EVs) plus a leader, indexed with 0,

imposing the reference behaviour for the whole platoon. Vehicles are organized as
a fleet and share their state information (e.g., position, speed and acceleration) with
all the others vehicles through a V2V communication and proximity sensors [9].

2.1 Autonomous Electric Vehicles Longitudinal Dynamics

The longitudinal behavior of the i-th EV (i = 1, 2, · · · , N) can be described by the

following nonlinear dynamics [15, 17, 25]:
ṗi (t) = vi (t)
ηi (t) Cr
v̇i (t) = ui (t) − gsin(θi (t)) − gcos(θi (t)) (c1 v(t) + c2 ) (1)
Ri (t)mi (t) 1000
ρ
− CD (t)(1 − φi )Afi (t)vi2 (t),
2mi (t) i

where pi (t) [m] ∈ R and vi (t) [m/s] ∈ R are the position and the speed of the
i-th vehicle, respectively; ui (t) [N m] is the control input that represents the vehicle
propulsion torque, i.e. the driving/braking torque; mi (t) [kg] is the vehicle mass;
ηi (t) is the drive-train mechanical efficiency; Ri (t) [m] is the wheel radius; Cr , c1
and c2 are the rolling resistance parameters that vary as a function of the road surface
type, road condition, and vehicle tire type; ρ [kg/m3 ] is the air density; CDi (t) is
the vehicle drag coefficient; Afi (t) [m2 ] is the vehicle frontal area; φi is the air-drag
reduction coefficient due to the platooning effects (according to [29]); g [m/s2 ] is
the gravity acceleration while θi (t) [rad] is the road-track slope.
116 B. Caiazzo et al.

Indicating with xi (t) = [pi (t), vi (t)] ∈ R2×1 the i-th vehicle state vector, the
nonlinear dynamic in (1) can be rewritten as follows:
   
vi (t) 0
ẋi (t) = + ui (t) (2)
ϕi (vi (t)) bi

where bi = ηi /(mi Ri ) while ϕi (vi (t)) ∈ R is a continuously differentiable and

bounded nonlinear vector field, defined as:

Cr
ϕi (vi (t)) = −gsin(θi (t)) − gcos(θi (t)) (c1 vi (t) + c2 )
1000
0.5
− ρCDi (t)(1 − φi )Afi (t)vi2 (t). (3)
mi (t)

In the same way, the leader dynamics can be described by the following nonlinear
system:    
v0 (t) 0
ẋi (t) = + u0 (t) (4)
ϕi (v0 (t)) b0
where x0 (t) = [p0 (t) v0 (t)] , being p0 (t) [m] ∈ R[m/s] and v0 (t) ∈ R the position
and the velocity of the leading vehicle, respectively; u0 (t) [N m] is the leader
control input that represents the vehicle propulsion torque, i.e. the driving/braking
torque, optimized via a MPC strategy as in [20]. Conversely, ui (t) in (1) is the
control input for each follower selected according to the distributed PI control
strategy proposed in [15], which updates its action based on the errors among the
state information shared by the vehicles via the communication network as

N   
N ' t 
ui (t) = − Kp aij pi (t) − pj (t) − dij − Ki aij pi (s) − pj (s) − dij ds
j =0 j =0 0
(5)

N  
− Kd aij vi (t) − vj (t) ,
j =0

where Kp , Kd and Ki are the proportional and integral control gains, respectively.
In so doing, this distributed PI controller can guarantee that each follower within the
platoon can track the leader energy-saving driving profile.

2.2 Battery Model

To model the EV battery pack of each vehicle i (i = 1, · · · , N) within the

platoon, according to [14], we consider an equivalent simplified electric circuit
[14]. It consists of an internal voltage source Eoc,i , two ideal diodes, and two
+ −
inner resistances Rin,i and Rin,i which represent the battery internal discharging
and charging resistances, whose values depends on the actual value of the battery
Energy-Oriented Inter-Vehicle Distance Optimization for Heterogeneous E-Platoons 117

State Of Charge (SOC) [14]. The voltage at the terminal of the battery is computed
as: "
+
Eoc,i − Rin,i Ibatt,i if discharging
Vt,i = Eoc,i − RIbatt,i = −
(6)
Eoc,i − Rin,i Ibatt,i if charging
Indicating with Preq,i the power required at the battery, the battery current Ibat t,i
can be derived as:
⎧ (
⎪ 4R − P
⎪
⎪ oc,i Eoc,i
− 2 − in,i req,i
⎪
⎪
E nb,i
⎨ − if discharging
2Rin,i
Ibatt,i (t) = ( (7)
⎪
⎪ 4R − P
⎪
⎪ E − 2 − in,i req,i
Eoc,i
⎪ oc,i
⎩
nb,i
+
2Rin,i
if charging.

being nb,i the number of cells constituting the battery. The battery State of Charge
can be, hence, computed as:
⎧ )t
⎨− 1
Cbatt,i 0 Ibatt,i (τ )dτ if discharging
SOCi (t) = )t (8)
⎩− ηbatt,i
Cbatt,i 0 Ibatt,i (τ )dτ if charging.

where Cbat t,i is the battery capacity, while ηbat t,i is the recharging efficiency of the
battery.

2.3 Power-Based Energy Consumption Estimation Model

Considering that the battery supplies a DC electric motor, for each vehicle i within
the platoon (i = 1, 2, · · · , N), the power-based EV Energy consumption Model is
a quasi-steady backward model whose input are the instantaneous vehicle speed
and the electric vehicle characteristics. The output of the model is the energy
consumption (EC) [kW h/km] required by the vehicle for a specific drive cycle.
To compute the EC, we first compute the power at electric motor according to the
The Comprehensive Power-based EV Energy consumption Model (CPEM) [12]:
 
1
Pem,i (t) = mi ai − φi (vi (t)) (9)
ηi ηem

where a [m/s2 ] is the acceleration on the vehicle i; ηem = 0.91 is the electric motor
efficiency, respectively.
The model takes into account the ability of EVs to recover energy during braking
manoeuvres using a regenerative braking system. Hence, the effective electric power
Peme ff,i (t) is computed distinguishing between the traction and the regenerative
braking mode: "
Pem,i (t) ifPw,e (t) ≥ 0,
Peme ff,i (t) = (10)
Pem,i (t) · ηrb,i (t) ifPw,e (t) < 0,
where ηrb,i (t) is the regenerative braking efficiency computed according to [12].
118 B. Caiazzo et al.

Finally, the required electric power is obtained by considering also the auxiliary
power loss Paux = 700[W ]:
Preq,i (t) = Peme ff,i (t) + Paux . (11)

Given the required power and the distance di [km] travelled by vehicle i, the energy
consumption [ kW h
km ] can be computed according to [12]:
' t
1 1
ECi = Preq,i (τ ) dτ . (12)
3600000 0 di

3 Optimization Procedure

Let vi (t) and ai (t) the optimal speed and acceleration profile of each vehicle,
properly computed according to MPC together with distributed-PI procedures. Let

di,i−1 (t) the optimal time-varying inter-vehicle distance between vehicle i and its
predecessor i − 1 to be properly computed for energy saving purposes. To deal
with the problem of inter-vehicle distance optimization, we exploit the distance-
dependent air drag coefficient expressed as [24]
 
CDi ,1

CDi (di,i−1 ) = CDi ,0 1 − (13)
CDi ,2 + di,i−1


being CDi ,0 the i-th vehicle drag coefficient in the absence of any slipstream (i.e.
the drag coefficient of the lead vehicle), while CDi ,1 and CDi ,2 positive constants
obtained by regressing the experimental data presented in [13].
By leveraging the above distance-dependent air drag coefficient (13), the required
power by i-th vehicle in order to achieve tracking performance can be, hence,
expressed as the following distance-dependent nonlinear function:
 Cr

Pi (di,i−1 (t)) = mai (t) + mg sin(θi (t)) + mg cos θi (t) (c1 vi (t) + c2 )
1000
 (14)
ρ
+ Afi CDi (di,i−1

)(vi )2 (t) vi (t),
2
where θi (t) is the road slope profile, which can be accurately obtained by combining
the GPS and geographic information system [8, 11, 26]. In order to achieve a further
energy consumption reduction while considering safety constraints, for each vehicle
within the platoon the following optimization problem is given:
min Pi (di,i−1 (t))
di,i−1

s.t. (15)
min
di,i−1 (t) ≤ di,i−1

(t) ≤ di,i−1
max
(t),
Energy-Oriented Inter-Vehicle Distance Optimization for Heterogeneous E-Platoons 119

min max
where Pi (di,i−1 (t)) is the required power as in (14), while di,i−1 (t) and di,i−1 (t)
refer to the minimum and maximum allowed inter-vehicle distances between
vehicles i and i − 1 in order to ensure emergency braking maneuvers as well as
air-drag reduction. Specifically, these distances constraints can be calculated, for
each time instant, using the lower and upper bound of the vehicle time-headway, i.e.
hmin and hmax respectively, as
min
di,i−1 = dst + hmin vi (t), max
di,i−1 = dst + hmax vi (t), (16)

According to the technical literature [28], the typical value for lower and upper
time-headway are given as hmin = 0.4[s] and hmax = 1[s]. The aim is to avoid a
continuous optimization procedure due to instability problem that might arises due
to the presence of fast varying signal. Moreover, since the optimal inter-vehicles
gap is strongly affected by variations in driving and road slope profiles [7], we
propose an inter-vehicle optimization procedure as in Fig. 1. More specifically,
by introducing road slope profile derivative θ̇i (t) and disagreement vectors ds =
ai (t) − ai (t − 1) and dt = θ̇i (t) − θ̇i (t − 1) to capture significant changes in driving

Fig. 1 Optimization algorithm

120 B. Caiazzo et al.

and road slope profiles, the proposed Algorithm allows computing the optimal inter-

vehicles distance vector di,i−1 (t) for each vehicle i = 1, . . . , N, based on properly
selected threshold. In so doing, the proposed Algorithm provides a suitable criterion
to determine the most influential time-instant when the optimization procedure has
to be run. In this paper, the optimization problem as in (15) is solved through a
Nonlinear Programming (NLP) algorithm via Matlab Optimization Toolbox.

4 Numerical Results

Here, we prove the effectiveness of the proposed optimization procedure in improve

the energy performance of a platoon of electric vehicles. More specifically, we
consider a platoon consisting of 5 electric vehicles plus a leader sharing information
via the leader-predecessor-follower (L-P-F) communication topology [31] and
moving along a road highway segment whose altitude profile is reported in Fig.3a.
Furthermore, the leader is equipped with MPC controller [20], while followers
can track the optimized reference leader behaviour via the distributed PI control
strategy in (5). To disclose the benefit of the proposed optimization algorithm,
we consider two simulation scenario: (i) base scenario, where the inter-vehicle
distances are computed via CTH spacing policy, i.e. di,i−1 = d st + h ∗ vi (t),
with h = 0.8[s] [16]); (ii) optimized scenario, where Fig. 1 is exploited. The aim
is to evaluate how the optimal time-varying spacing policy, computed according
to Fig. 1, can further reduce the energy consumption w.r.t. the case where no
optimization procedure is considered. The numerical analysis is carried out via
the Matlab/Simulink simulation platform, while vehicles parameters are listed in
Table 1.
Results in Fig. 2a,b show the behavior of the platoon in base scenario, in terms
of speed and acceleration profiles respectively, while the inter-vehicle distance of
each vehicle within the platoon w.r.t. its predecessor is represented in Fig. 2c. For
the resulting driving profile in Fig. 2 and for road slope profile as in Fig.3, the
optimization Fig. 1 provides the optimal time-varying inter-vehicle spacing profile
as in (4)c. Note that, within the optimization procedure, for each vehicle we consider

Table 1 Heterogeneous nonlinear vehicles parameters

Vehicle mi ηi [−] Ri [m] CD,i Af,i amax amin Cbatt,i nb,i ηbatt,i
ID [kg] [−] [m2 ] [m/s2 ] [m/s2 ] [Ah] [−] [−]
0 1545 0.89 0.3060 0.28 2.3315 2.5 −6.0 65 96 0.97
1 1015 0.89 0.2830 0.30 2.1900 2.5 −6.0 65 96 0.97
2 1375 0.89 0.2880 0.24 2.4000 2.5 −6.0 65 96 0.97
3 1430 0.89 0.3284 0.28 2.4600 2.5 −6.0 65 96 0.97
4 1067 0.89 0.2653 0.29 2.1400 2.5 −6.0 65 96 0.97
5 1155 0.89 0.2880 0.33 2.0400 2.5 −6.0 65 96 0.97
Energy-Oriented Inter-Vehicle Distance Optimization for Heterogeneous E-Platoons 121

Fig. 2 Results of base scenario. Time history of: a) vehicles speed vi (t), i = 0, . . . , 5; b) vehicles
acceleration ai (t), i = 0, . . . , 5; c) inter-vehicle distances di,i−1 (t), i = 1, . . . , 5

Fig. 3 Non-flat road features: (a) altitude profile; (b) road slope profile θ(t); (c) road slope
variation θ̇(t)
122 B. Caiazzo et al.

Fig. 4 Results of optimized scenario. Time history of: (a) vehicles speed vi (t), i = 0, . . . , 5; (b)
vehicles acceleration ai (t), i = 0, . . . , 5; (c) inter-vehicle distances di,i−1 (t), i = 1, . . . , 5; d)
Energy Saving w.r.t. base scenario

the slope profile of the road stretch travelled by the vehicle itself. Here, for the sake
of brevity, we report just an exemplary one as in Fig 3. Hence, by applying the
suggested optimization procedure, we obtain results in Fig. 4. Specifically, Fig. 4a,b
disclose the time-history of vehicles speed and acceleration profiles, respectively,
while Fig. 4c highlights the reduction of the gap distance w.r.t. Fig. 2c. To prove
the benefit of the proposed optimization technique in terms of energy saving, we
also compare the power required by a vehicle for tracking the reference driving
profile imposed by the leader according to (11) both in the base scenario and in
optimized scenario. The difference between the power computed in both cases are
shown in Fig.4d, which corroborates the effectiveness of the proposed strategy in
improve the energy saving. Finally, to quantify the energy reduction for each vehicle
w.r.t base scenario, we compute the percentage variation of energy consumption.
Results, reported in Table 2, confirm a average energy reduction of 2.7% for the
entire platoon.

Table 2 Reduction of the energy consumption [kWh/km] in percentage for each vehicle i
Configuration Vehicle 1 Vehicle 2 Vehicle 3 Vehicle 4 Vehicle 5 Mean
Time-varying spacing policy −2.7129 −2.7038 −2.7090 −2.6804 −2.6944 −2.7000
Energy-Oriented Inter-Vehicle Distance Optimization for Heterogeneous E-Platoons 123

5 Conclusion

In this paper, an integrated optimization procedure for the optimization of inter-

vehicles distances is investigated for an autonomous platoon of heterogeneous
electric vehicles. The proposed optimization approach allows to improve energy
consumption of each vehicle by acting on air-drag coefficient, which vary as a
function of inter-vehicle distance. Specifically, the proposed Algorithm, on the basis
of both driving and road slope profiles, computes the optimal time-varying gap
distances for each vehicle within the platoon w.r.t. its predecessor via NLP Tool.
Safety constraints have been also embedded in the proposed strategy to guarantee
safety driving conditions, i.e., avoid collision among vehicles. Finally, numerical
analysis have been carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach
in guaranteeing energy saving with respect to a base scenario where the typical CTH
spacing policy has been employed. Results highlight how the proposed algorithm
ensure an improvement of energy performance for each vehicle within the platoon
w.r.t. the base scenario, resulting in an average reduction of about 2.7% for the
whole platoon.

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Optimization-Based Assessment
of Initial-State Opacity in Petri Nets

Gianmaria De Tommasi, Carlo Motta, Alberto Petrillo, and Stefania Santini

Abstract When dealing with security and safety problems, Discrete Events Sys-
tems (DESs) could be a convenient way to model the behavior of distributed
dynamical systems. Among the different DES mathematical tools, Petri Nets (PNs),
by benefiting from a twofold representation, i.e. a graphical and a mathematical one,
can be exploited for effectively tackling some security problems in the DES context
such as the opacity one. This latter property is related to the capability of hiding
a secret to external observers. When the secret is modeled by the initial marking
(state) of a PN, the problem is known in literature as Initial-State Opacity (ISO).
A DES is said to be ISO if, for every trajectory originating from a secret state,
there exists another trajectory originated from a non-secret state, such that both
of them are equivalent from an external observer (potentially malicious) point of
view. Therefore, in an opaque system, such intruder can never determine whether the
system started from a secret state or from a non-secret one. In this paper, leveraging
the mathematical representation of PNs, we present a sufficient condition which
permit to assess if a system is not opaque, by solving a feasibility problem with
integer optimization variables. Specifically, the proposed approach starts from the
ISO definition and, then, characterizes the aforementioned non-opacity condition as
a set of linear constraints that, if not satisfied, imply the system to be not ISO.

Keywords Opacity · Petri nets · ILP problems

G. De Tommasi · C. Motta () · A. Petrillo · S. Santini

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica e delle Tecnologie dell’Informazione, Università degli Studi
di Napoli Federico II, Napoli, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 127
A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_10
128 G. De Tommasi et al.

1 Introduction

Modern control systems are becoming more open to the cyberworld and, as such,
are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks [2, 9]. As a consequence, a major challenge is
the design of supervisory and control systems that are resilient to them [6, 13, 15].
Indeed, in a distributed system, information leaks and deceptions represent a threat
to the privacy and security of the system itself, since they may enable external cyber
attackers to infer information about the system state, and consequently interact in
a malicious way with safety-critical functions. This can be accomplished in two
different ways, denoted active or passive attacks. In active attacks, the attacker’s
goal is to inflict damage on the system, while in passive attacks the attacker’s goal
is to learn secrets about the system [14]. In the first case a security problem arises,
while the latter deals with system privacy.
Security and privacy problems can be effectively modeled in the framework
of Discrete Event Systems (DESs, [10]). Two main information-flow concepts
have been successfully used to characterize privacy, and hence passive attacks,
when the CPSs are modelled at the DES level: opacity [5, 12, 16, 17] and non-
interference [6, 7]. When dealing with opacity, the secret is either a sublanguage of
the language generated by the plant model (language-based opacity), or a system
state, either initial, current or final (state-based opacity). In an opaque system,
a user with full knowledge of the model, but with partial capabilities about the
observation of the event occurrences cannot infer any secret, no matter for how
long the system dynamic is partially observed. A system can be designed as
such, otherwise supervisory control can be used to enforce opacity by restricting
the closed-loop behaviour in presence of controllable events [15]. An alternative
approach consists in designing ad hoc obfuscation/insertion functions to fool the
malicious observer [13].
Here we deal with Initial State Opaque (ISO) in DESs. Formally, a DES is said
to be ISO if, for every trajectory originating from a secret state, there exists another
trajectory originated from a non-secret state, such that both of them are equivalent
from an external, potentially malicious, observer’s point of view. Therefore, in an
opaque system, such intruder can never determine whether the system started from
a secret state or from a non-secret one.
In this paper we introduce a sufficient condition to conclude if a DES modeled
as a PN system is not ISO. Such a sufficient condition is based on the solution
of Integer Linear Programming (ILP) optimization problems. Optimization-based
approaches does not require the explicit computation of the PN reachability set,
hence they are particularly well suited for models with a high level of paral-
lelism (for a quantitative comparison between optimization-based and graph-based
approaches the interested readers can refer to [3]). Although a similar approach
has been proposed to deal with both non-interference [6] and language-based
opacity [5], to the best of the authors’ knowledge the result presented in this
paper represent a first attempt to address the state opacity problem by means of
an optimization-based approach.
Optimization-Based Assessment of Initial-State Opacity in Petri Nets 129

The paper is structured as follows: in the next section the notation adopted
for PNs is introduced, together with the definition of the considered opacity
properties. Section 3 gives the main result of this paper, namely a sufficient
condition to verify if a PN system is not ISO, based on the solution of ILP
problems. Moving forward, Sect. 4 some examples are presented in order to show
the effectiveness of the proposed approach, while conclusive remarks and possible
future research directions are finally discussed in Sect. 5.

2 Backgrounds

As already mentioned in the previous section, in this work we deal with opacity
in DESs modeled as Petri Net (PN) systems. Therefore, in this background section,
we first introduce the notation adopted to describe PNs. Afterwards the concept
of ISO is formally given. The interested reader can find more details on PNs in [8],
while a comprehensive discussion about opacity in DES can be found in [17].

2.1 Basic Petri Nets notation

PNs are Place/Transition (P/T) net defined as 4-tuple N = (P , T , Pre , Post),

where P is the set of m places (represented by circles), T is the set of n transitions
(represented by boxes), and Pre : P × T → N (Post : P × T → N) is the pre-
(post-) incidence matrix. Pre(p , t) = ω (Post(p, t) = ω) means that there is an arc
with weight ω from p to t (from t to p); C = Post − Pre is the incidence matrix.
Given a P/T net it is possible to assign a non-negative number of tokens to each
of its places by means of the marking function − →m : P → N; graphically the tokens
are represented as black dots, see the example shown in Fig. 1. The marking of a
PN represents the state of the system and is usually specified as a vector −→
m ∈ Nm ,
→
− →
−
being m 0 the initial marking. A PN system S = N , m 0  is given by the net and
its initial marking; as an example the initial marking for the net system shown in
Fig. 1 is equal to −→m 0 = (2 0 0)T .
The marking in a PN system, i.e. its state, evolves following the firing of
the net transitions. In particular, a transition t is enabled under the marking →
−m
→
− →
− 
if and only if m ≥ Pre(· , t); the transition enabling is denoted as m t. An
−
→ →
−
enabled transition t may fire, yielding
→
− →
−  →
−  the marking m = m + C (· , t), and this
is denoted as m t m , while m ¬ t denotes that the transition t is not enabled
under − →m . A firing
1 − sequence
2 − from −
→ is a sequence of transitions σ = t 1 t 2 . . . t k
 k m−  →
such that m t  m 1 t  m 2 . . . t →
→
− → → m k and this is denoted as − →
m σ − m k . The
→
−  →
−
notations m σ  and m ¬[σ  denote an enabled and a disabled sequence under
the marking − →m , respectively. The length of a sequence σ is denoted with |σ |,
and the symbol ε is used to denote the empty sequence or the silent transition; it
130 G. De Tommasi et al.

p1 p2

uo1 uo2

p3

2
o1

Fig. 1 An example of Petri net system

 →
is σ ε = εσ = σ , and |ε| = 0; moreover it is − →m ε− m . A marking −→
m  is said to
 −
→
− →
−
be reachable from m 0 iff there exists a sequence σ such that m 0 σ  m . R(N, −
→ →
m 0)
denotes the set of reachable markings of the Petri net system S . The language of a
Petri net system S is defined as follows1
*  +
L(N , −
→
m 0) = σ ∈ T ∗ | −
→
m0 σ .

It is possible to associate a vector to any a firing sequence σ by means of the

function −→
σ : T → N, where − →
σ (t) represents the number of occurrences of t in σ .
The vector σ is called the firing count vector of σ . The notation −
→
− →σ = π (σ ) is
−
→
used to denote that σ is the firing count vector of σ .

1 The notation T ∗ denotes the Kleene closure of T (see [10, Ch. 2]).
Optimization-Based Assessment of Initial-State Opacity in Petri Nets 131

 →
m 0 σ −
If −
→ m , then it is possible to write the vector equation

−
→
m =−
→
m0 + C · −
→
σ , (1)

which is called the state equation of the net system.

The next result, taken from [11], gives a necessary and sufficient condition that
must be fulfilled by every sequence with finite length enabled under the marking −
→
m.
Lemma 1 ([11]) There exists ρ integer vectors − s ,... ,−
→
1
→
s ∈ Nn with ρ ≤ |σ |
ρ
such that the following linear constraints are fulfilled

m 0 ≥ Pre · −
−
→ →
s1
→
−
m0 + C · −
→s 1 ≥ Pre · −
→
s2
... (2a)

−
→ −
ρ−1
→
m0 + C · s i ≥ Pre · −
→
sρ
i=1


ρ
−s = π(σ )
→
i (2b)
i=1

iff there exists at least one sequence σ , which is enabled under the marking −
→
m0
−
→
such that π (σ ) = σ .
Remark 1 In this paper we deal with bounded net systems, i.e. systems whose
cardinality of R(N , − →m 0 ) is finite. For this class of systems, there exists an
integer Jmin such that, if ρ ≥ Jmin , for each − →
m ∈ R(N , − →m 0 ) there exists at
→
− →
−
least one set of vectors s 1 , . . . , s ρ that fulfill the constraints (2a) and

−
→ − ρ
m =−
→
m0 + C · →
s i.
i=1

In other words, for bounded net systems Jmin integer vectors are sufficient to
describe the reachability set R(N , −→m 0 ) by means of the constraints (2a). For a
bounded but non live net system, an estimation of Jmin can be carried out by
using the reachability graph of the system itself. For bounded and live systems and
estimation of Jmin can be computed exploiting the concept of T-invariant (for a
more comprehensive discussion on this issue, the interested reader can refer to [4,
Sec. 3]). 
132 G. De Tommasi et al.

In the next section we will deal with opacity in DESs modeled with PN systems.
In this context, external users can only partially observe the system behaviour.
In order to model this partial observability, the set T is partitioned into the
two disjoint sets of observable (represented by empty boxes) and unobservable
transitions (represented by filled boxes), named respectively To and Tuo . Given a
sequence σ ∈ T ∗ , its observation is the output of the natural projection function
P r : T ∗ → To∗ , which is recursively defined as P r(σ t) = P r(σ )P r(t), with
σ ∈ T ∗ and t ∈ T ; moreover, P r(σ ) = t if t ∈ To , while P r(t) =  if t ∈ Tuo .
Remark 2 In order to ease the notation, in Sect. 3 we will refer to Preo (Preuo ) as a
partition of the pre-incidence matrix obtained by excluding the columns associated
to the non-observable (observable) transitions. The same goes for Posto (Postuo )
and C o (C uo ) 

2.2 Initial State Opacity in Petri Nets

In the next section we will give a sufficient condition to check if a PN system is not
initial state opaque. When dealing with ISO in PNs the information we are interested
in hiding is the initial marking of the net, although the intruder knows the structure
of the system—i.e., the net topology is known—he/she does not have a precise
information about the initial state. For this reason, we will consider net systems
where there is an uncertainty on the initial marking. To this aim we define M0 ⊆ Nm
as the set of all the initial markings, that is we assume that −→m 0 belongs to any of
the markings in the set M0 . Furthermore, M0 is split into two disjoint subsets: the
set of secret markings Ms ⊂ M0 , and the set of non-secret markings Mns ⊂ M0 ,
being Ms ∩ Mns = ∅. When dealing with systems with uncertain initial marking,
we adopt the notation S = N , M0 , implying that − →
m 0 ∈ M0 .
Given the two subsets Ms and Mns , we can retrieve the definition of ISO system
by extending as follows the one given in [17] to the case of PN systems.
Definition 1 A net system S with uncertain initial marking belonging to M0 is
ISO if and only if

∀−
→
m s ∈ Ms and ∀ σ ∈ L(N, −
→
m s) , ∃ −
→
m ns ∈ Mns and ∃ σ  ∈ L(N, −
→
m ns ) s.t.
P r(σ ) = P r(σ  ) . (3)


Optimization-Based Assessment of Initial-State Opacity in Petri Nets 133

3 Main Results

This section gives the main contribution of this paper, namely a sufficient condition
to check if a net system is not ISO. Therefore, before presenting such a main result,
let us first derive the definition of a not ISO system. From Definition 1, the following
readily follows.
Definition 2 A net system S with uncertain initial state belonging to M0 is not
ISO if and only if

m s ∈ Ms and ∃ σ ∈ L(N, −
∃−
→ →
m s) , ∀ −
→
m ns ∈ Mns and ∀ σ  ∈ L(N, −
→
m ns ) s.t.
P r(σ ) = P r(σ  ) . (4)


In other words, from Definition 2, a PN system with multiple secret and non-secret
initial markings is not ISO iff at least one secret marking has a firing sequence
whose projection on the observable transitions is different from the projection of
every firing sequence generated by the set of not secret initial markings.
We can now state the following theorem, that exploits the mathematical rep-
resentation of PN systems to recast Definition 2 in terms of a set of feasibility
problems with integer optimization variables. It should be noticed that the proposed
result represents only a sufficient condition. Indeed, if at last one of the considered
feasibility problems does not admit a solution, then the system S is not ISO,
otherwise, when a solution can be found no conclusions can be drawn as far as ISO
is concerned.
Theorem 1 Given a bounded net system S , an unobservable set of transi-
tions Tuo ⊂ T and an integer J ≥ Jmin , let Ms be the set of secret initial
markings.
The system is not ISO if, for at least one secret marking −
→
m s ∈ Ms , there exists
an integer ρ such that the following feasibility problem
134 G. De Tommasi et al.

⎧ −
→
⎪ m s ≥ Preuo · −→
 s1
⎪
⎪
⎪ →
−
⎪
⎪
⎪  s1 ≥ Preo · −
m s + C uo · −
→ →
s1
⎪
⎪
⎪ →
− →
− −
→
⎪
⎪
⎪ m + C ·  + C · s ≥ Pre ·−
→
 s2
⎪
⎪
s uo s1 o 1 uo
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ ... (5a)
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ 
J −1
J
⎪
⎪ −
→
m s + C uo · −
→
 si + C o · −s ≥ Pre · −
→ →
⎪
⎪ i o s J
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ i=1 i=1
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ ν ≥ Preuo · →−
⎪
⎪
ns1
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ ν + C uo ·  ns1 ≥ Preo · −
→
− →
s1
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ ν+C ·− → +C ·− →s ≥ Pre ·−
→
 ns2
⎪
⎪
uo ns1 o 1 uo
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ ... (5b)
→  ⎨
X −m si , ρ : 
J −1
J
⎪
⎪ ν + C uo · −
→ −
→
s i ≥ Preo · −
→
⎪
⎪ nsi + C o · sk
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ i=1 i=1
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ 
J 
n
⎪
⎪ →
−
⎪
⎪ s i (j ) ≥ ρ (5c)
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ i=1 j =1
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ 
card( Mns )
⎪
⎪ −
→
⎪
⎪ ν= m nsj ◦ (kj · 1), (5d)
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ j =1
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ 
card( Mns )
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ kj = 1 (5e)
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ j =1
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ − , −
→ → −
→
⎪
⎪ si  nsi , s i ∈ N ,
n
i = 1,2,... ,J (5f)
⎪
⎪
⎩
kj ∈ {0, 1} , j = 1 , . . . , card(Mns ) (5g)

does not admit a solution, where “◦” indicates the Hadamard product.
Proof First of all, let note that due to constraints (5d), (5e) and (5g), the vector ν
permits to automatically select a non-secret marking such that a solution to
problem (5) exists. Hence, if (5) does not admit a solution, it means that for a
given −→
m s ∈ Ms , the constraints are not feasible for any −→
m ns ∈ Mns .
Moreover, in problem (5) three set of firing count vectors are included, namely
• −→s i to model the firing of the observable transitions (see Remark 2);
→
−
•  si to model the firing of unobservable transitions when the initial marking is
the secret one, i.e. −
→
m0 = − →
m s;
→
−
•  nsi to model the firing of unobservable transitions when the initial marking is
a not-secret one, i.e. −
→
m ∈M .
0 ns
Optimization-Based Assessment of Initial-State Opacity in Petri Nets 135

Therefore, taking into account also the constraint (5c), if the feasibility problem (5)
does not admits a solution, then it means that there does not exist any firing count
vector corresponding to a sufficiently long sequence that is enabled both from − →
ms
and from any non secret marking in Mns , such that the observable transitions are
mapped into the same firing count vectors − →s i . If this is the case, it means that
condition (4) holds, implying the system to be not ISO.
Sufficiency of the condition given by Theorem 1 comes from the fact that in the
firing count vectors we last the order of the firing of the transitions. Hence, if
problem (5) admits a solution, this does not necessarily imply that condition (4)
does not hold.

4 Examples

In this section we show the effectiveness of the proposed approach by applying the
condition of Theorem 1 to some simple examples. All the considered ILP problems
have been solved by using the GLPK solver [1].
Let us first consider the PN system in Fig. 1 with three transitions, two of
which are unobservable, i.e. T*uo =+ {uo1 , uo2 }. Let us now consider the *secrete+
marking set equal to Ms = − →m s with − m s = (2 0 0)T , and Mns = −
→ →m ns
−
→
with m ns = (0 2 0) . for this simple example, it can be readily noticed that,
T

with this choice for Ms and Mns the net system is ISO; indeed there is only
one observable transition, therefore an external intruder can only see the firing of
transition o1 , which fires infinite times, regardless of the initial marking.
If we check the condition of Theorem 1 to assess the opacity of the considered
example, by letting J = 2 it follows that the feasibility problem generated finds a
solution whatever the choice of ρ. Therefore, the condition of Theorem 1 does not
hold. However, this is expected, being the system ISO and the proposed condition a
sufficient one to assess if the system would have been not ISO.
Let us now consider the net in Fig. 2 which has five transitions, three of which
are unobservable, i.e. Tuo = {uo1 , uo2 , uo3 }.
For this system we consider the following two cases:
(1) Two secret initial markings, − →
m s1 = (1 2 1 0 0)T and − →m s2 = (2 2 0 0 0)T , and
the non secret one m→
− = (0 2 2 0 0) , are considered.
T
ns1
Therefore, when applying the condition of Theorem 1 two feasibility problems
should be solved. When − →
m s1 and − →
m ns1 are considered, the only observable
transition which can fire is o2 . Therefore a solution to problem (5) can be found,
since a possible firing sequence enabled from − →
m s1 is:

σ = uo2 o2 uo2 uo3 o2 uo2 o2 uo2 uo3 o2 . . . ,

136 G. De Tommasi et al.

p1 p2 p3

uo1 uo2

p4 p5 p6

o1 2 o2
uo3

Fig. 2 Petri net system considered in Sect. 4

whose projection is:

P r(σ ) = o2 o2 , . . . .

On the other hand, if −→

m s2 is considered, then the feasibility problem’s outcome
highlights that there does not exist any firing sequence preventing o1 from firing.
As a matter of fact the feasibility problem fails to find a solution for J = ρ = 4,
when − →
m s2 is considered, therefore the net is not ISO.
(2) In this second case, we considered one secret initial marking − →m s1 =
→
−
(2 2 0 0 0)T , and two non-secret initial markings m ns1 = (0 2 2 0 0)T
and −→
m ns2 = (1 2 1 0 0)T .
Once again, we consider every sequence enabled from − →m s1 and we conclude
that the only observable transition which can fire is o1 .
While, similarly to the previous case, when mns1 is considered the firing of o2
cannot be prevented for a sufficiently large ρ, the feasibility problem (2) admits
a solution if −→
m ns2 is selected. Therefore, in this case, being the condition of
Theorem 1 only sufficient, no conclusion can be drawn about the opacity of the
system.
Optimization-Based Assessment of Initial-State Opacity in Petri Nets 137

5 Conclusions

A sufficient condition to assess non initial state opacity in DES modeled as Petri
net systems have been given. In particular, the proposed condition is based on the
solution of ILP problems. Such an optimization-based approach can benefit by the
use of off-the-shelf optimization tools, rather than relying on ad hoc algorithms, as
in the case of graph-based approach (see also the comparison made in [3]).
Being only sufficient, the proposed result can be considered as a preliminary one,
and possible line of future research consists in developing a set of constraints able
to validate the necessary and sufficient conditions to assess ISO. Such an extension
would enable to extend the supervisory control approach presented in [6] to enforce
opacity in PN systems.

References

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Eco-Driving Adaptive Cruise Control via
Model Predictive Control Enhanced
with Improved Grey Wolf Optimization
Algorithm

Raffaele Cappiello, Fabrizio Di Rosa, Alberto Petrillo, and Stefania Santini

Abstract In this paper, we suggest a novel Ecological Adaptive Cruise Control

(Eco-ACC) system for an autonomous electric vehicle able to drive its motion
while minimizing as much as possible its energy consumption. To this aim, we
consider a Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) method enhanced with
an off-line Computational-intelligence (CI)-based optimization algorithm, i,e. the
Improved-Grey Wolf Optimizer (I-GWO). Specifically, since the control perfor-
mances strongly depend on the proper selection of the NMPC cost function, we
propose the I-GWO algorithm to help the control designer find the sub-optimal
weighting factors of the dynamic cost function optimized via the NMPC. An
extensive numerical analysis involving realistic vehicle dynamics and a real-life
Italian road network route confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach in
guaranteeing the ACC control objectives while ensuring energy saving.

Keywords Improved grey wolf optimization algorithm · MPC · ADAS ·

Adaptive cruise control

1 Introduction

In the last decades, autonomous driving has gained greater attention due to the
benefit it could lead in terms of road safety since, as shown in [5, 13, 16, 17], the
90% of the traffic accidents are caused by human errors. To face this issue Advanced
driving assistant systems (ADAS) plays a key role in improving driving safety and

Authors are in alphabetic order.

R. Cappiello F. Di Rosa · A. Petrillo () · S. Santini

Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Napoli Federico
II, Napoli, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 139
A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_11
140 R. Cappiello et al.

comfort. Adaptive cruise control (ACC), whose aim is to maintain an Ego vehicle
at a certain distance w.r.t. the preceding one, represents one of the main technology
that helps in this direction [23]. Besides road safety, the environmental issue has
received considerable attention since road transport is responsible for 16.5% of the
global greenhouse gas emissions [3]. With the aim at reducing emissions, spreading
attention has been given to hybrid/electric vehicles, where, however, the battery
usage management strongly affect the vehicle life cycle [22].
In the technical literature, due to its capabilities to reach multiple control
objectives while handling multiple constraints in a receding horizon fashion,
Model Predictive control approaches are widely proposed in [8, 11, 24] to design
Ecological-ACC. The choice of both cost function and the weightings factors
strongly influences the closed-loop system’s performance, and the energy-saving
requirements [1]. Indeed, the tuning of the weightings parameters is challenging
as they are related to the closed-loop performance in a complex manner [21].
However, this problem is not considered in the above-mentioned work, and the
tuning parameters are selected via a try and error process. To overcome this problem,
in this work, we propose a novel Eco-ACC control system which combines the
Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) and computational intelligence (CI)-
based optimization algorithm, i.e. the improved Grey Wolf algorithm (I-GWO)
[4], for the sub-optimal tuning of the weightings parameters w.r.t. the closed-loop
performances. Specifically, since the vehicle dynamic is inherent nonlinear (air
drag, gravity force, rolling resistance, etc. . . ) and strongly affected by uncertainty
(e.g. due to road shape and slope), an on-line Nonlinear Model Predictive Control
(NMPC) approach is used to keep the accuracy of the prediction model faithful to
reality. Conversely, I-GWO works off-line based on a data set derived by running
several simulations of the behaviour of the autonomous electric vehicles under the
action of the ACC control system. Then, by evaluating a properly designed cost
function, the I-GWO optimization algorithm finds the best sub-optimal solution
for the NMPC tuning parameters. The obtained result is then used to shape the
NMPC cost function and solve the on-line NMPC control problem. To validate
the proposed control approach, an extensive numerical validation has been carried
out considering a real Italian road section (i.e. the route Roma-Padova). Moreover,
to perform an adequate analysis, a comparison w.r.t an NMPC control strategy
whose weightings parameters have been chosen via try and error technique has been
performed. To sum up, numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the approach
and its efficiency in ensuring energy saving.
Finally, the paper is organized as follows. In Sect. 2, the grey wolf algorithm, as
well as the improved one is introduced. Section 3 presents the problem statement
and control-oriented vehicle models. In Sect. 4, we suggest the proposed control
approach while in Sect. 5, the numerical analysis is carried out. In Sect. 6,
conclusions are drawn.
Eco-Driving Adaptive Cruise Control via Model Predictive Control Enhanced. . . 141

2 Mathematical Preliminaries

2.1 Grey Wolf Optimizer

The main idea that inspired the author of the grey wolf optimizer is the behaviour,
during the hunting, of grey wolves in nature. In general, the hierarchy of grey wolves
is structured as follow [20]: (i) Alfa wolves (α) are responsible for nearly all group
decisions such as time to hunting, places to stay and, time to wake up; (ii) Beta
wolves (β) is the second wolf in the hierarchy and helps the alpha to make decisions;
(iii) Delta wolves (δ) is the lowest rank of grey wolves’ social hierarchy, but delta
wolves are dominant compared with omega wolves; (iv) Omega wolves (ω) are the
remaining wolves that can not be classified as alfa, beta, or delta.

2.1.1 Grey Wolf Optimizer: Principle of Operation

The hunting of the grey wolves consists of three main step: (i) encircling; (ii)
hunting; (iii) attacking the prey.

2.1.2 Encircling

In order to simulate and model the encircling behaviour of wolves the following
equation are used:
, ,
$ = ,,C$ · X
D $ ,, ,
$ p (t) − X(t) $ + 1) = X
X(t $ p (t) − A$ · D
$ (1)

where t defines the current iteration A$ and C$ are coefficient vectors calculated as
$ indicate the position vector of a grey
in (2), Xp is the position of the prey, and X
wolf.

a · r$1 − a$ , C$ = 2 · r$2
A$ = 2$ (2)

where a$ components are linearly decreased from 2 to 0 over the iterations as in (3)
and r1 and r2 are random vectors in [0, 1].

a(t) = 2 − (2 × t)/MaxIter (3)

2.1.3 Hunting

As the wolves usually operate in a natural environment, they know where the prey
is and where they should go to encircle the prey. Instead, in our scenario, the wolves
do not know where is the prey, defined as X$p in (1), and the central assumption
142 R. Cappiello et al.

of the algorithm is that the main three wolves, alpha, beta, and delta, have a better
knowledge about the current and exact position of the prey. Other all the wolves
follow the previously obtained best solution during the optimization process. In
order to model what is said, the following equations are used.
, , , , , ,
$ α = ,,C$ 1 · X
D $ ,, ;
$α − X $ β = ,,C$ 2 · X
D $ ,, ; D
$β − X $ δ = ,,C$ 3 · X $ ,,
$δ − X (4)
     
X $ α − A$i,1 · D
$ i,1 = X $ i,2 = X
$α ; X $ β − A$ i,2 · D
$β ; $ i,3 = X
X $ δ − A$ i,3 · D
$δ (5)
$ $ $
$ i−GW O (t + 1) = Xi,1 + Xi,2 + Xi,3
X (6)
3
where X $α, X
$β, X$ δ are the first three best solutions at iteration t, A$ i,1 , A$i,2 , A$i,3 , are
calculated as in (2).
It can be observed that the final position of the i-th wolf i.e. X $ i−GW O (t + 1)
would be, due to the presence of A$i , in a random place within a circle, defined by
the positions of alfa, beta, and delta in the search space.

2.1.4 Attacking

The hunting process is terminated when the prey stops moving, and wolves start
an attack. This can be done mathematically by the value of a which is linearly
decreased over the curse of iterations controlling the exploration and exploitation as
in (3).

2.2 Improved Grey Wolf Optimizer: IGWO

In a classical GWO approach, the searching is driven by the α, β and δ wolves,

which promise to find the best solution. Unfortunately, this behaviour may lead to
entrapment in locally optimal solution and reduce the population’s diversity. An
improved version, the Improved Grey Wolf Optimizer (I-GWO), has been lately
developed by Mirjalili et al. [14] to overcome these common problems. The I-
GWO adds a movement strategy called dimension learning based hunting (DLH).
The DLH consists of taking into account neighbouring wolves when updating each
wolf’s position in the pack. For all iteration t a neighbourhood Ni (t) for each wolf
Xi (t) is defined as in (7).
*   +
Ni (t) = Xj (t) | Di Xi (t), Xj (t)  Ri (t), Xj (t) ∈ Pack (7)

where Ri (t) is calculated as in (8) using Euclidean distance between the current
position of Xi (t) and the candidate position Xi−GW O (t + 1) defined in (6) and
Di (·) is Euclidean distance between Xi (t) and Xj (t) for all i, j in the pack.

Ri (t) = %Xi (t) − Xi−Gwo (t + 1)% (8)

Eco-Driving Adaptive Cruise Control via Model Predictive Control Enhanced. . . 143

Once a neighbourhood of Xi (t) is constructed, the position of the i-th wolf at the
next iteration, according to the DHL approach, is calculated:
Xi−DLH (t + 1) = Xi (t) + rand × (Xn (t) − Xr (t)) (9)

where Xi (t) is the position of the wolf in analysis at the current iteration, Xn (t) is a
random wolf selected between the neighbors Ni (t) and Xr (t) is a random wolf from
the whole pack.
At the end of this phase, there are two possible positions for the Xi (t + 1) wolf,
one calculated via the classical GWO approach Xi−GW O and the other one obtained
by the DHL technique Xi−DLH . To chose the effective position for the for the i-th
wolf componing the pack at the next iteration the criteria described in (10) is used.
Xi−GW O (t + 1), iff (Xi−GW O ) < f (Xi−DLH )
Xi (t + 1) = (10)
Xi−DLH (t + 1) otherwise

where f (Xj ) is the fitness value for the generic Xj position, Xi−GW O and Xi−DLH
are respectively evaluated as in (6)–(9).

3 Problem Statement

Consider an autonomous electric vehicle, called Ego vehicle, equipped with on-
board proximity sensors (such as radar, lidar and camera) and with on-board
control unit that allows the vehicle to move into its surrounding traffic scenario
autonomously. Our aim is to design a novel Ecological Adaptive cruise Control
(Eco-ACC) that allows maintaining an optimal inter-vehicle distance from the
preceding vehicle while minimizing energy consumption to reach the control
objective (see Fig. 1). Specifically, the proposed control system has to pursue the
following multiple control objectives: (i) tracking of the preceding vehicle speed
profile; (ii) maintaining a desired safe inter-vehicle distance to avoid any possible

Fig. 1 Adaptive cruise control system

144 R. Cappiello et al.

collisions; (iii) ensuring a safe and comfortable driving experience; (iv) minimizing
energy consumption and, hence, ensuring improved battery management.

3.1 Electric Autonomous Ego Vehicle

The Ego Vehicle behaviour is described by its longitudinal motion, which takes into
account the aerodynamics drag, rolling resistance, and gravitational force [18]. To
derive a mathematical model for control design, we assume that the driving/braking
torques are integrated into one high-level control input. Accordingly, the motion
of the ego vehicle can be described by the following non-linear dynamical system
[19, 25]:
   
ṗego (t) vego (t)
= η (11)
v̇ego (t) − 2m
1 2 (t)
Cd Ch ρa Avego − μg cos(θ(t)) − g sin(θ(t)) + R·m u(t)

where pego (t)[m] ∈ R and vego (t) [m/s] ∈ R are the position and the velocity of the
Ego vehicle w.r.t. the reference road frame, respectively; u(t) [N m] is the control
input that represents the vehicle propulsion torque, i.e. the driving/braking torque;
m [kg] is the vehicle mass; η is the drive-train mechanical efficiency; R [m] is the
wheel radius; Cd is the vehicle drag coefficient; ρa [kg/m3 ] is the air density; A [m2 ]
is the vehicle frontal area; Ch is a correction factor (unitless) due to the altitude of
the road where vehicle moves; μ is the rolling resistance coefficient; g [m/s2 ] is
the gravity acceleration while θ (t) [rad] is the road-track slope. According to [19],
the altitude correction factor is computed as 1 − 0.085H where H [km] is the
road altitude. For sake of compact notation, by introducing the state vector x(t) =
[pego (t) vego (t)]T , we can recast the vehicle dynamics as in (11) as
ẋ(t) = f (x(t), u(t)) (12)

For the EV battery pack model [7, 12] we consider an equivalent simplified electric
circuit consisting of an internal voltage source Voc and one resistance Rb . The
voltage at the terminal of the battery is computed as:
Vb (t) = Voc − Rb Ib (t) (13)

being Ib the battery current. Indicating with Preq (t) the power required at the
battery, Ib (t) can be derived as
-
4Rb Preq (t)
Voc − 2 −
Voc nb
Ib (t) = (14)
2Rb

being nb the number of cells constituting the battery. The battery State of Charge
can be hence computed as:
' t
1
SOC(t) = − Ib (τ )dτ (15)
Cbatt 0
Eco-Driving Adaptive Cruise Control via Model Predictive Control Enhanced. . . 145

where Cbat t is the battery capacity. Finally, the power required to the battery Preq is
evaluated as [15]
Rm
Preq (t) = ω(t)u(t) + u(t)2 + Paux (16)
K2
where ω is the rotational speed of the DC motor derived from the linear speed
v (t )R
as ω = egoR t , being Rt the transmission ratio; K = Ka φ, being K the
armature constant and Φ (in Weber [W b]) the armature magnetic flux; Rm is the
DC motor resistance; Paux , not determined by vehicle velocity and acceleration, is
the auxiliary power loss including some electronic devices in the vehicle, such as
radios, lights, air conditioners and so on [10].

3.2 Control Objectives

Given a reference behaviour as imposed by the preceding vehicle and measured

via the proximity sensors, i.e. pref (t) and vref (t)-being these latter the preceding
vehicle position and speed, respectively- our aim is to design an Eco-ACC such that:
 
lim pref (t) − pego (t) − d  = 0 (17)
t →∞
 
lim vref (t) − vego (t) = 0 (18)
t →∞

pref (t) − pego (t)  d  (19)

' ∞
min Preq (τ )dτ (20)
0

where d  the desired constant inter-vehicle distance between the ego vehicle and
the preceding vehicle. Note that the control objectives (17)–(19) will refer to
the tracking of a desired behaviour w.r.t. the preceding vehicle while the control
goal (20) is related to the energy saving requirement.

4 Control Design

To fulfil the control objectives proposed in Sect. 3.2, in this section Eco-ACC system
is designed according to an NMPC control methodology that leverages the meta-
heuristic I-GWO optimization algorithm for the proper selection of the controller
weight parameters.
146 R. Cappiello et al.

4.1 Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Design

The NMPC is chosen due to the nonlinear electric vehicle dynamics, the variability
of driving conditions and the multitude of physical constraints for involved dynamic
variables, hence coping with the dynamical system uncertainties by anticipating
future situations [2]. See Fig. 2 for the proposed control architecture.
Specifically, we design the control action u(t) in (11) by solving the following
multiple optimization problem:
' t+T
min J (x(τ |t), u(τ |t))dτ (21)
u(t) t

subject to:
ẋ(t) = f (x(t), u(t)) (22a)
amin ≤ v̇ego (τ |t) ≤ amax (22b)
jmin ≤ v̈ego (τ |t) ≤ jmax (22c)
amin Rm amax Rm
≤ u(τ |t) ≤ (22d)
η η

where T is the prediction horizon; xi (τ |t) and ui (τ |t) are the prediction of the state
variable and the control input respectively of the dynamical model (12); amin and
amax denote the minimum and maximum bounds for the Ego vehicle acceleration
variable; jmin and jmax denote the minimum and maximum bounds for the Ego

Fig. 2 Control architecture for the Ego vehicle

Eco-Driving Adaptive Cruise Control via Model Predictive Control Enhanced. . . 147

vehicle jerk variable. Moreover, the cost function J is defined as:

J = ω1 %pref − pego − d  %2 + ω2 %vref − vego %2 + ω3 %u%2 (23)

where ω1 , ω2 and ω3 are non-negative weighting scalar which are tuned by

exploiting the I-GWO optimization algorithm.
Note that, the cost function as in (23) is selected in order to satisfy the multi-
control objectives as in Sect. 3.2, while the constraints (22b)–(22d) are imposed so
to guarantee a safe and comfortable driving experience.

4.2 Grey Wolf Optimization Algorithm for the Tuning

of the NMPC Weights

Typically, the weighting factors ωρ (ρ = 1, 2, 3) into the cost function to be

optimized as in (23) are chosen using trial and error techniques [1]. However, this
choice strongly influences the closed-loop performances and the effectiveness of the
proposed control strategy. To face this issue, herein we propose the exploitation of
the offline meta-heuristic optimization algorithm, i.e. the I-GWO, to obtain a sub-
optimal trade-off among the different weighting factors ωk and hence among the
different control goals as detailed in Sect. 3.2. To find the sub-optimal values of ωρ
(ρ = 1, 2, 3), called ωρ (ρ = 1, 2, 3) are obtained according to Algorithm 1.
More specifically, after initialising each search agent in the pack with three
random positions within the bounded search region, we run the NMPC with the
selected value, and we evaluate the following cost function
 (epos (k) − d  )2 (evel (k))2 SOC(k)
J = ψ1 k + ψ2 k + ψ3 (24)
η1 η2 η3
∀k

epos = pref (k) − pego (k) is the position error, evel = vref (k) − vego (k) is the speed
error, k is the generic simulation step and ηρ are weighting factors which allows
normalizing each term of J , and hence equally weighting each of them.
After running a number of simulations equal to the number of wolves that
compose the pack, the best three solutions are combined to estimate the position
of the optimum, which corresponds in our case to the three weights that minimise
the cost (24). At the following iteration, the wolves’ positions are updated using the
assumed position of the optimal as a “central point” and information about a defined
neighbourhood (10). The process is then repeated for a number of times equal to the
maximum number of iterations, at the end of which three optimal sub-solutions are
obtained and denoted as ω1∗ , ω2∗ and ω3∗ .
148 R. Cappiello et al.

Algorithm 1 Computing the Optimal NMPC weighting factors ωρ (ρ = 1, 2, 3)

Declarations:
Let epos = (pref − pego − d  ) the position error;
Let evel = (vref − vego ) the velocity error;
Let SOC the value of state of charge;
Let α = [α1 , α2 , α3 ] the alpha grey wolf, the first best solution;
Let β = [β1 , β2 , β3 ] the beta grey wolf, the second best solution;
Let γ = [γ1 , γ2 , γ3 ] the alpha grey wolf, the third best solution;
Initialization:
Initialize the number of grey wolf as n = 55;
Initialize the number of max iteration as 15;
Initialize the population of grey wolves Xi = (i = 1, 2, . . . , n)
Set t = 0
Algorithm:
while t < Max number of iteration do
for each search agent do
if t==0 then
Randomically initialize the position of the search agent in search region;

else
Update position of the search agent based on the three best previous solutions and
neighbourhood as in (10);

end
Start the simulation;
Get data from simulation and evaluate and evaluate epos , evel and SOC;
Evaluate the cost function for the I-GWO algorithm as in (24);

end
Find the best three solutions: α, β and γ according to (10);
t=t+1;

end
ω1∗ = α(1);
ω2∗ = α(2);
ω3∗ = α(3);

5 Numerical Analysis

In this section, we disclose the effectiveness of the proposed NMPC strategy

enhanced with the I-GWO optimization algorithm to ensure that the ego vehicle
tracks the reference behaviour imposed by the preceding vehicle while optimizing
its energy consumption. Numerical simulations are carried out by exploiting the
Matlab/Simulink simulation platform considering the Roma-Padova Italian road
network whose altitude and road profile are reported in Fig.3. The values of the
EGO vehicle motion parameters [9], as well as the ones related to the battery and the
electric motor [6] are in Table 1. Regarding the reference behaviour to be imposed
on the Ego vehicle, we consider that the preceding vehicle moves with the constant
speed of vref = 15 [m/s] while the desired inter-vehicle distance between the Ego
Eco-Driving Adaptive Cruise Control via Model Predictive Control Enhanced. . . 149

Fig. 3 Altitude and slope profile for the appraised Roma-Padova road network

vehicle and the preceding is selected as d  = 10 [m]. Finally, to show the benefits
of the proposed control approach we compare the performances achieved with our
I-GWO-enhanced NMPC with the ones achievable with a classical NMPC where
the weighting factors are not optimized.

5.1 Numerical Results

By leveraging the I-GWO optimization procedure as in Algorithm 1, we derive

the NMPC control sub-optimal weights as ω1∗ = 20.6537, ω2∗ = 1.74043 and
ω3∗ = 0.0749339, found in 12 iterations as shown in Fig. 4b. Moreover, in Fig. 4a,
we plot the evolution of (24) as a function of the pair ω1 , ω2 for the optimal
value of ω3 where the sub-optimal point is also explicitly highlighted. Numerical
results in Fig. 5 confirm the proposed control approach’s effectiveness. Indeed,
the Ego vehicle, starting from random initial conditions, reaches the constant
speed as imposed by the leading vehicle in 20 s with an overshoot of 13% (see
Fig. 5a) and maintains the inter-vehicle spacing of d  w.r.t. the preceding vehicle
itself. This confirms the control approach’s effectiveness in guaranteeing the correct
functioning of the proposed IGW-based ECO-NMPC ACC control system.

5.2 Comparison Analysis

Here we compare our approach’s performances with a classical NMPC strategy

where the weighting factors are not optimized with the proposed I-GWO but are
selected via a try and error process, i.e. ω1 = 23; ω2 = 1.97; ω3 = 0.06. By
comparing the performances in Fig. 6, it is possible to observe our approach’s
improved performances in ensuring an Eco-ACC control w.r.t. the controller in
comparison. The speed the of vehicle controlled by NMPC, with weights selected
via try and error, faster converges to the desired value but with a worst overshoot.
This behaviour causes a less smooth dynamic behaviour which implies an increasing
energy consumption. Indeed, by evaluating the integral of battery current necessary
 150

Table 1 Ego vehicle parameters

R CD amax amin nb Cbatt Rb Rt Rm Paux K jmin jmax
m [kg] η [−] [m] μ [−] [−] A [m2 ] [m/s2 ] [m/s2 ] [−] [Ah] [Ω] [−] [Ω] [W] [Vs] [ms−3 ] [ms−3 ]
1521 0.93 0.5 0.020 0.28 2.3315 2.5 −6.0 192 40 0.01 0.95 0.11 750 10.08 −2 2
R. Cappiello et al.
Eco-Driving Adaptive Cruise Control via Model Predictive Control Enhanced. . . 151

(a) (b)

Fig. 4 I-GWO optimization algorithm results: (a) evaluation of the I-GWO cost function; (b)
evolution of the optimal cost function vs iterations

(a) (b)

Fig. 5 Control performance with weighting factor optimized. Time history of: (a) Ego vehicle
speed; (b) position error

to drive the electric vehicle, it is possible to observe how our approach can ensure
an energy reduction of 2.5% (see Fig. 6c).

6 Conclusion

In this paper, we have proposed a novel Eco-ACC control system for autonomous
electric vehicles that leverages the NMPC technique enhanced with the I-GWO
meta-heuristic optimization algorithm for the proper selection of the weighting
factors of the NMPC cost function. The proposed approach has aimed to drive
the Ego vehicle according to an ACC control objective while minimizing as much
as possible the energy consumption. Since the above-mentioned control objectives
strongly depend on the proper choice of the cost function to be optimized, the I-
GWO algorithm has helped design the NMPC problem via an off-line optimization
of its weighting factors. Numerical analysis has confirmed the effectiveness of the
proposed approach in guaranteeing the ACC control objectives while leading to
considerable energy saving.
152 R. Cappiello et al.

(a) (b)

(c)

Fig. 6 Comparison between the proposed I-GWO-based NMPC controller and non-optimized
NMPC ) t controller. Time history of: (a) Ego vehicle speed; (b) Position error; (c) energy consump-
tion 0 Ib (τ )dτ

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 Part V
OR in Industry
Optimizing and Evaluating
a Maintenance Strategy
for Multi-Component Systems

Lucía Bautista Bárcena and Inmaculada T. Castro

Abstract Maintenance optimization is a key challenge in engineering and indus-

try. Nowadays, the development of multi-component and complex systems has
increased the difficulty of studying and analyzing these systems. Preventive and cor-
rective thresholds are set to check the system deterioration. If one of those thresholds
is exceeded by a component, this component is preventively or corrective main-
tained, depending on its degradation level. The system is periodically inspected, and
these inspection times are used as opportunities to perform a preventive maintenance
in the rest of the components. The optimal cost, minimizing the time between
inspections and the preventive thresholds, is evaluated. Different techniques for the
optimization process are employed; typical Monte-Carlo simulation combined with
some meta-heuristic algorithms.

Keywords Maintenance · Reliability · Stochastic processes

1 Introduction

The evaluation of the maintenance of multi-component systems has been a key

challenge in engineering and industry, since we can greatly reduce maintenance
costs and avoid system breakdowns by applying the correct policy [1, 13, 15].
In this work, we are going to study a complex system consisting of two different
types of components: monitored (or degrading) components and non-monitored
(or non-degrading) components. Both types of components deteriorate following
different processes: monitored components are subject to a continuous degradation
process following a Gamma process, while non-monitored components fail at
certain times, following a Poisson arrival process. These non-monitored components

L. B. Bárcena () · I. T. Castro

Department of Mathematics, University of Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 157
A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_12
158 L. B. Bárcena and I. T. Castro

can only be maintained upon failure. This model was proposed in [10] and [4] with
two blocks of units.
In real life we can find lots of systems with that structure: some pieces that
degrade continuously (for example, a conveyor belt, whose degradation can be seen
with the naked eye) and other ones that are subject to sudden failures and we cannot
predict their failure, for example, a light bulb [4, 10].
This work is organized into sections. The problem is presented in the Introduction
Sect. 1. The problem is modelled mathematically trough different probability
distributions and the maintenance policy is explained in Sect. 2. In Sect. 3, the
objective cost function is described, with a well-known theorem useful in this paper.
Section 4 is devoted to the optimization algorithms used to optimize the system
maintenance. Finally, a numerical example is presented in Sect. 5 with identical
and non-identical components, continuing with the most relevant conclusions of the
work in the last Sect. 6.

2 Mathematical Modelling of the Problem

We consider a system composed of m monitored components and n non-monitored

components. The assumptions that we made on the model are the following:
• The m monitored components are subject to a continuous degradation which is
modelled using a Gamma process with shape parameter αi (t) and scale parameter
βi (t) depending on time t. Gamma processes are well-known and they are really
useful in maintenance [2, 18]. If we denote by Xi (t) the deterioration level of
component i at time t, for i = 1, . . . , m, and considering αi (t) = αi t and βi (t) =
βi , we have the density function of this process:

βi αi t αi t −1
f(αi t,βi ) (x) = x exp (−βi x), x ≥ 0,
(αi t)

where  is the well-known Gamma function.

• The n non-monitored components are subject to sudden failures [5]. We suppose
that these failures follow a Poisson process, that is, the distribution of the time
between failures of non-monitored components is an exponential distribution
with parameter λ. Let Y be the time between failures, then the survival function
of Y is given by F̄Y (t) = exp (−λt).
The assumption of exponentially distributed times between inspections seems to
be restrictive. Apart from the mathematical tractability of the Poisson process due
to its memoryless property, the Poisson process is an excellent model for many
real-world phenomena as a consequence of the Palm-Khintchine Theorem [17].
Supposing that we have a very large number of independent stochastic processes,
where each separate process generates only rarely an event, the theorem states that
the superposition of all these processes behaves approximately as a Poisson process.
Optimizing and Evaluating a Maintenance Strategy for Multi-Component Systems 159

That is the case of the degrading components in our model: the superposition of
all of them, when m → ∞ behaves as a Poisson process.

2.1 Maintenance Policy

The deterioration state of the system is inspected periodically, instead of having a

continuous monitoring through sensors, which is more expensive. Apart from the
inspection policy, a condition-based maintenance policy and an opportunistic main-
tenance policy are implemented. With condition-based maintenance [2, 3, 6], we
perform maintenance actions depending on the system state. Adding opportunistic
maintenance, this allows us to take advantage of the maintenance or inspection times
of a component to check the state of the rest of the monitored components of the
system.
For that, we set two different deterioration thresholds [14] in each monitored
components: a corrective threshold Li and a preventive threshold Mi , for i ∈
1, . . . m. At each inspection time, the deterioration level Xi (t) of the monitored
components is checked, for i ∈ 1, . . . m. We have three situations:
1. If Xi (t) < Mi , then component i is left as it was.
2. If Mi ≤ Xi (t) < Li , then component i is preventively replaced by another one
and Xi (t) is now restored to zero.
3. If Xi (t) ≥ Li , then component i does not work and it is correctively maintained
by replacing it.
This scheme is repeated for all i ∈ I = {1, 2, . . . , m}. On the other hand, if
a component reaches the preventive or corrective threshold, a signal is sent to the
maintenance team, and it starts to repair the system after a certain time. With that,
we can also check the system of the rest of the monitored components (with the
same procedure that has been explained before) in these maintenance times, which is
called opportunistic maintenance. We can see a representation of a Gamma process
(which represents a simple system with only one component) in Fig. 1.

3 Expected Cost Definition

In this section we study the asymptotic behaviour of the expected cost of the system
maintenance. A renewal cycle is the time between two maintenance actions that
restored the system to the initial state, that is, to as good as new state. So that, we
can treat the system as a Markov chain with a space of recurring states [8].
Let E[C p (R)] and E[C c (R)] be the costs due to the preventive and corrective
maintenance of the monitored components in a renewal cycle R. Let E[C nm (R)]
be the expected cost due to the corrective replacements of the non-monitored
160 L. B. Bárcena and I. T. Castro

Deterioration level

Time
VM

VL

Fig. 1 Realization of a gamma degradation process with preventive threshold M and corrective
threshold L. Random variables σM and σL denote the instant of time in which the preventive and
corrective threshold are reached, respectively

components in a renewal cycle and E[C i (R))] corresponds to the expected cost
due to inspections.
Assigning a cost for each maintenance task, the long-run expected cost C∞ can
be obtained using a well-known result in renewal processes theory.
Theorem 1 (Renewal-Reward Theorem) For a positive recurrent renewal pro-
cess in which a reward Rj is earned   during cycle length Xj and such that
{(Xj , Rj ) : j ≥ 1} is i.i.d. with E |Rj | < ∞, the long run rate at which rewards
are earned is given by:

R(t) E[R]
lim = , with probability 1.
t →∞ t E[X]

In other words, the rate at which rewards are earned is equal to the expected reward
over a cycle divided by an expected cycle length. Moreover,

E[R(t)] E[R]
lim = .
t →∞ t E[X]
Optimizing and Evaluating a Maintenance Strategy for Multi-Component Systems 161

For t ∈ (0, ∞), the average cost on the interval [0, t] is C(t )
t , where C(t) is the
cost until time t. Using Theorem 1, the long-run expected cost is expressed as:

E[C(t)] E[C(O)]
C∞ = lim = ,
t −→∞ t E[O]

where O is the length of a cycle, that is, in our case, the time to the next maintenance
action. Finally, the expected cost rate is developed as:

E[C p (O)] E[C c (O)] E[C nm (O)] E[C i (O)]

C∞ = + + + . (1)
E[O] E[O] E[O] E[O]

4 Optimization Algorithms

The objective of the work is to find the optimal values for the time between
inspections and the preventive threshold that minimize the expected cost. It is
rather tricky due to the stochastic nature of the problem. For that, we are going
to implement different optimization algorithms: an exhaustive search algorithm
combined with different meta-heuristics algorithms (genetic algorithms, ant colony
algorithms and pattern search algorithm).

4.1 Local Search

It is often successful to initially explore the solutions of the problem to get a rough
idea of where the local maximum or minimum of the problem lies. At each iteration
of the search algorithm, the condition is refined to change the current solution to a
better one if necessary. As a first approximation of the solution of the problem it is
a good method. For this local search, we define a search set for the time between
inspections T and the preventive threshold M. For each combination of each pair
of points, we calculate the minimum expected cost. At each iteration, we obtain the
indices of the pair of points where we reach the minimum value, and perform a
translation to a neighboring value in the initial search space (increasing a unit the
indices and multiplying by an increment of 0.05 units), where we continue repeating
the process. We finish when there is no improvement of the solution.
Combined with meta-heuristic techniques it is very useful to improve the
solutions in an adequate computational time: initially a local search of the given
problem is performed and then a meta-heuristic appropriate to the type of problem
is applied.
162 L. B. Bárcena and I. T. Castro

4.2 Meta-Heuristic Algorithms

The problem studied is, in general, difficult to solve. Consequently, heuristic

algorithms can be helpful. There optimization algorithms work very well for a
certain type of problem, but provide bad solutions in other case [7].
In general, these techniques have certain stopping criteria. The most common
are taking into account the mean fitness of the individuals or the fitness of the best
individuals, and stop the searching when this value reaches a convergence value.
In the case of the genetic algorithm, another usual stopping criteria is when the
assigned number of generations is reached.

4.2.1 Genetic Algorithms

They are based on the evolution theory and natural selection. A genetic algorithm
starts with a set (also called population) of N solutions (or individuals), which
evolve according to some rules applied in the following iterations of the algorithm.
Individuals are selected from the population and recombined, producing offspring
which will be the next generation. They were first applied by Zio, Marseguerra and
Compare to this problem in [7, 11, 12].
• Initialization: at time t = 1, we generate N random solutions. In this specific
case of a maintenance optimization problem, the solutions is usually a vector
of variables with the interval time between inspections, thresholds values, . . . so
they are of the form (Tj , Mj ), j = 1, . . . , m.
• Fitness evaluation: for the set of sampled parameters, the cost is evaluated.
These values are collected and order to select the best individuals for the next
iteration. A greater probability is assigned to the individuals that minimize the
cost function.
• Crossover: an offspring is created by cutting the selected individuals into two
parts and exchanging their parts. That is, given S1 = (T1 , M1 ) and S2 =
(T2 , M2 ), the new individuals considered are S¯1 = (T1 , M2 ) and S¯2 = (T2 , M1 ).
• Mutation: it alters randomly some elements of a solution, always with a small
probability. In this case, we randomly change a solution Si = (Ti , Mi ) by
replacing it with a nearby value, simulated by a uniform distribution.
Genetic Algorithm Pseudo-Code
Generate initial population randomly
while i < max(iterations) / stop condition is not fulfilled
do
Fitness calculation of each individual
Select the best individuals
Perform crossover with a probability p
Perform mutation with a small probability q
Select the new individuals for the population
end while
Optimizing and Evaluating a Maintenance Strategy for Multi-Component Systems 163

4.2.2 Pattern Search

Pattern search is a direct search used for optimizing functions that are not continuous
or differentiable (also known as black-box search or derivative-free search).
At each iteration of the algorithm, it moves to the nearest point which best
minimizes its objective function. This procedure is repeated until the accuracy is
achieved, or the number of iterations (stopping criteria) of the algorithm is reached.
Pattern Search Algorithm Pseudo-Code
Initiate in a point p
while i < max(iterations) / stop condition is not fulfilled
do
Evaluate the nearest neighbour of the point p
if there is a best solution
Update the current solution to the best neighbour
else
Move to the next point
end if
end while

4.2.3 Ant Colony Algorithm

Ant colony algorithm is useful in combinatorics and discrete problems with graphs.
Samrout applied it in preventive maintenance optimization [16]. It is based on the
behaviour of ants while they are seeking a path in the graph between their colony
and a source of food. Ants move randomly and they discover the shortest path
via pheromone trails. When more pheromone is deposited on path, it increases the
probability of that path to be followed.
In the initialization phase, a set of edges and nodes is defined. Nodes are points
enclosed in the search space [0, Tmax ] × [0, Li ], for i ∈ 1, . . . m and the edges are
the connections between these nodes.
The probability that ant k chooses node j starting from node i is:

τij (t)
p(i, j ) = ,
τik (t)
k∈ Nodes

where τij (t) is the amount of pheromone existing for edge Iij .
Ant Colony Algorithm Pseudo-Code
Generate initial population of n ants
Initialize the pheromone path and the parameters
while i < max(iterations) / stop condition is not fulfilled
for each ant do
Generate a solution using some transition rules
Update the pheromone
end for
Refine with a local search
164 L. B. Bárcena and I. T. Castro

Choose the best ant

Update the best global solution
end while

5 Case Study

The study of the previous maintenance model is completed with the search of the
optimal values for the time between inspections, Topt and the preventive threshold
Mopt that minimize the total expected cost in Eq. (1). This search is performed
using the software MATLAB. A combined method with Monte-Carlo simulation
and meta-heuristics techniques is applied to perform the optimization [11, 12].

5.1 Identical Degrading Components

We study a system with m identical degrading components. So, αi = α, βi = β and

Li = L for all i = 1, . . . , m. The following parameters and sequence of costs are
imposed in the computation process:
• Cost of a corrective maintenance: 80 monetary units.
• Cost of a preventive maintenance: 30 monetary units.
• Cost due to periodic inspections: 30 monetary units
• Cost due to non-monitored components: 80 monetary units.
• Corrective threshold L: 6.
• Shape parameter α of the gamma process: 1.25.
• Scale parameter β of the gamma process: 0.5.
The objective is to find the optimal values Topt and Mopt for the time between
inspections and the preventive threshold M, respectively, that minimize the total
expected cost of the system maintenance. The search space for the optimal preven-
tive threshold M is [0, L], and for the time T between inspections is [0, Tmax ], with
Tmax = 15 time units, due to it is a logical interval value if we take into account the
rest of the model parameters. In Table 1, the optimal values for M are represented,
obtained with three different meta-heuristics. Ant Colony (ACO) works worse if
we compare it to the results obtained with the others. The ones obtained with the
Genetic Algorithm and the Pattern Search Algorithm are more similar. CPU time is
expressed in minutes.
The optimal values Topt for the time between inspection T are shown in Table 2.
In both cases, Genetic Algorithm is the most efficient in relation to computational
time and the optimal expected cost obtained, which is shown in Table 3. Due to this
fact, the best algorithm to optimize our problem is the Genetic Algorithm, and it has
been implemented to study the total expected cost when increasing the number of
components.
Optimizing and Evaluating a Maintenance Strategy for Multi-Component Systems 165

Table 1 Optimization of preventive threshold M with Genetic Algorithm, Ant Colony Algorithm
and Pattern Search Algorithm
Components Mopt GA CPU time Mopt ACO CPU time Mopt PS CPU time
1 2.87 2.25 2.27 2.58 2.69 1.45
2 2.90 2.10 2.37 4.27 2.98 3.10
3 3.17 3.43 2.50 6.23 3.40 4.46
4 3.29 3.57 2.44 7.98 2.98 5.76
5 3.27 4.53 2.51 8.34 2.97 6.64
6 3.30 4.67 2.65 9.89 3.02 8.32
7 3.48 5.28 2.61 10.67 3.14 8.56
8 4.05 5.96 3.30 11.23 3.83 9.02
9 4.32 6.47 4.27 11.65 3.97 9.87
10 4.95 8.21 5.04 15.32 4.56 11.47

Table 2 Optimization of inspection time T with Genetic Algorithm, Ant Colony and Pattern
Search Algorithm
Components Topt GA CPU time Topt ACO CPU time Topt PS CPU time
1 2.90 2.51 2.79 1.98 2.69 2.87
2 2.34 2.66 2.59 2.78 2.98 3.46
3 2.20 3.24 1.80 3.46 3.4 5.11
4 2.20 5.01 1.77 5.00 2.98 5.56
5 1.68 5.32 1.79 6.38 2.97 6.63
6 1.69 6.18 1.48 7.89 3.02 7.42
7 1.30 6.74 1.30 8.05 3.10 8.44
8 1.22 7.23 1.43 9.36 2.48 9.24
9 1.15 8.19 1.19 10.55 1.67 10.22
10 1.00 10.04 0.95 11.87 1.24 10.61

Table 3 Expected cost C∞ Components Expected cost (C∞ )

calculated with local search
and Genetic Algorithm 1 4.8970
2 6.8499
3 8.6851
4 10.2468
5 11.6907
6 12.9925
7 14.1216
8 15.0826
9 16.5598
10 16.7657
166 L. B. Bárcena and I. T. Castro

5.2 Non-Identical Degrading Components

The system is considered to be made up of non-identical degrading components,

with different scale parameter in the gamma process that defines their deterioration.
Therefore, the preventive threshold will be different for each of the m monitored
components.
We maintain the same maintenance costs as in the case of identical components
as in Sect. 5.1. The corrective threshold remains fixed and the same for all
components. However, the shape parameter of the gamma process will now vary,
as will the preventive threshold, which will be different for each of the components
as they have different degradation processes.
Therefore, the shape parameter increases by 0.1 units as a component is added to
the system, as follows

α1 = 1.2, αi = αi−1 + 0.1, for i ∈ 1, . . . , m

The same search space for Topt and Mopt as in the previous section is used,
and the objective is to optimize these parameters in order to obtain the minimum
expected cost. With different components, we are calculating initial points in
Table 4, using the local search and after that, the Genetic Algorithm is applied to
look for the best solution. The results are shown in Table 5.

Table 4 Initial points Components T0 M0

obtained with Local Search
1 4.65 2.54
Algorithm for different
components 2 4.39 2.95
3 4.28 3.17
4 3.13 3.37
5 2.47 3.78
6 2.29 3.93
7 1.89 4.18
8 1.64 4.37
9 1.53 4.65
10 1.48 4.70
Optimizing and Evaluating a Maintenance Strategy for Multi-Component Systems 167

Table 5 Optimal values Topt , Mopt and C∞ obtained with Genetic Algorithm
Components Topt Mopt C∞
1 6.29 2.37 5.24
2 5.99 (2.68, 2.01) 6.32
3 3.93 (3.39, 3.29, 3.08) 7.85
4 2.79 (4.31, 3.95, 3.49, 3.23) 9.96
5 2.20 (3.93, 3.86, 3.80, 3.72, 3.66) 10.94
6 2.34 (3.95, 4.25, 4.62, 4.28, 4.47, 4.12) 12.45
7 2.57 (4.58, 4.75, 4.66, 4.98, 4.87, 5.01, 4.57) 14.52
8 2.45 (4.52, 4.17, 4.36, 4.40, 4.84, 4.10, 4.74, 4.65) 16.16
9 2.18 (4.14, 4.38, 4.45, 4.36, 4.02, 4.11, 4.54, 4.32, 4.15) 19.73
10 2.37 (3.85, 4.15, 4.26, 4.02, 3.48, 3.87, 3.96, 4.00, 3.88, 3.98) 22.18

6 Conclusions

The main novelty of this work is the use of heuristics to find the best maintenance
strategy, which allows us to save cost. Previous work has focused on modeling
the problem from a probabilistic and analytical point of view [5, 6]. Another
point in favor is to perform a maintenance policy at the system level, considering
the components as a whole when performing maintenance based on the system
condition, instead of doing it component by component, as in [4, 9] or [19].
The optimal cost, as well as the optimal preventive thresholds and time between
inspections for a system consisting of identical and non-identical components have
been obtained. The computational time is reduced if we initially perform a local
search for the parameters T and M. The most efficient algorithm is the genetic
algorithm. It is observed that the expected cost increases as more components are
added. In the case of identical components, the optimal value for the preventive
threshold is increasing, while the optimal time between inspections is decreasing
as more components are added. Something similar occurs with non-identical
components, although Mopt and Topt stabilize as the number of components m →
∞.
In future work, it would be interesting to consider a dependency between degrad-
ing and non-degrading components. The assumption of exponential distribution
between failure times thanks to the Palm-Khintchine theorem will allow us to greatly
simplify this objective. Another interesting point would be the improvement of the
algorithms already proposed for the resolution of the problem.

Acknowledgments This research was supported by Junta de Extremadura, Spain (Project

GR18108) and European Union (European Regional Development Funds).
The authors want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and time.
168 L. B. Bárcena and I. T. Castro

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Metal Additive Manufacturing: Nesting
vs. Scheduling

Ibrahim Kucukkoc

Abstract As a new and emerging technology, additive manufacturing (AM) is

considered to be the future of manufacturing. In comparison to traditional machining
techniques, parts are produced through a layer-by-layer production process in AM. It
provides both design flexibility and strength as well as lightness and low prototyping
costs. Selective laser melting (SLM) is a popular AM technology used in fabricating
metal components. Although the SLM technology is a high-cost process at first
glance, it can be compensated with efficient planning and scheduling systems. This
chapter aims to investigate the relationship between nesting and scheduling when
planning and scheduling SLM machines. Numerical examples are conducted to
show that optimal nesting does not guarantee optimal scheduling. It is concluded
that the nesting and scheduling problems must be considered simultaneously to
ensure feasibility.

Keywords Additive manufacturing · 3D printing · Selective laser melting ·

Scheduling · Nesting · Planning · Metaheuristics

1 Introduction

Additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing) techniques have appeared in

1980s and evolved significantly since then. Among those [1], fused deposition
modelling, laminated object manufacturing, stereo lithography and selective laser
sintering are used for non-metal products; selective laser melting (SLM), electron
beam melting and laser engineered net shaping are utilized for fabricating metal
parts. Ngo et al. [2] presented a review on materials, methods, applications and
challenges in AM.

I. Kucukkoc ()
Department of Industrial Engineering, Balikesir University, Balikesir, Turkey
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 169
A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_13
170 I. Kucukkoc

Thanks to its layer-by-layer production process, additive manufacturing (AM)

processes provide many significant advantages over traditional subtractive tech-
niques. Some of these advantages are strength to weight ratio, design flexibility,
high accuracy and resource efficiency [3].
With enormous advancements gained in the materials and manufacturing tech-
nology, some particular techniques (such as SLM) have shifted from prototyping
to direct digital manufacturing. This yielded a revolution in several industries such
as defense, aerospace, automotive and healthcare industries. In comparison to its
competitors in metal AM domain, SLM has become the dominant application of
metal AM processes thanks to its high accuracy and performance. Many leading
aerospace and aeronautic companies, including NASA, Airbus and Boeing, utilize
additive manufacturing to produce a large percentage of components (including the
critical ones such as fuel pumps and nozzles) as a single part instead of assembly.
Ford and Despeisse [4] summarized the advantages and challenges of AM and
provided a discussion regarding the implications on sustainability.
This chapter addresses the multiple SLM machines scheduling problem consid-
ering nesting constraints (i.e. 2D allocation of parts with no overlap). The main
objective of the chapter is to numerically show the necessity of handling both
nesting and scheduling problems together. The numerical tests also show that
optimal nesting does not mean optimal scheduling in the AM machine scheduling
problem.
The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. Sect. 2 provides the review of the
literature and Sect. 3 presents a formal description of the problem studied. Section
4 presents the details of the solution method, adapted from Kucukkoc et al. [5] and
Sect. 5 represents the results of the numerical examples. The chapter is concluded
in Sect. 6, followed by some future research directions.

2 Literature Review

There has been an extensive amount of research on the AM technology itself. A

recent review on the advancement of materials and methods involved in AM has
been presented by Ngo et al. [2]. However, the topic covered in the current work is
more about the planning of AM resources, i.e. machines. This is an emerging field
as most of the research on AM has focused on the process and its applications in
different industries rather than the efficient use of AM machines (see, for example
[6–9]). Among others, Li et al. [10] investigated the influence of scan length on
fabricating thin-walled components in SLM. Camacho et al. [11] presented a review
of AM applications in the construction industry. Li et al. [22] applied response
surface methodology to optimize the process parameters of SLM with the aim of
minimizing surface roughness. Frazier [12] provided a review on SLM.
Regarding the production planning of SLM machines, the number of researches
is quite limited but increasing rapidly. The preliminary researches on planning and
scheduling of SLM machines belong to Kucukkoc et al. [5] and Li et al. [13]. The
problem was introduced in Kucukkoc et al. [5], in which a mathematical model
Metal Additive Manufacturing: Nesting vs. Scheduling 171

was proposed to maximize resource utilization considering part delivery times. Li

et al. [13] proposed a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model and two
heuristics, called best-fit and adapted best-fit, to minimize the average production
cost per material volume. Kucukkoc et al. [14] developed a genetic algorithm
(GA) approach to minimise maximum lateness in multiple SLM machines. Chergui
et al. [15] proposed a heuristic approach for the parallel identical AM machines
scheduling and nesting problem to minimize maximum lateness. Zhang et al. [16]
focussed on the two-dimensional placement optimization of AM parts providing a
two-step strategy. Kucukkoc [3] proposed MILP models to minimise makespan in
(a) single, (b) parallel related, and (c) parallel unrelated AM machine scheduling
problems. Che et al. [17] considered orientation selection and two-dimensional
nesting problems simultaneously for unrelated parallel AM machine scheduling
problem. Aloui and Hadj-Hamou [18] proposed a heuristic for AM machine
scheduling problem under technological constraints. Oh et al. [19] reviewed the
studies on nesting and scheduling problems for AM.
As investigated in this survey, to the best knowledge of the authors, there is no
research which discusses how nesting affects scheduling (and vice versa) when
planning AM machines. The contribution of this chapter is based on numerical
problems to show that better solutions in terms of nesting objectives are not the best
solutions in terms of scheduling objectives in AM machine scheduling problems.

3 Problem Statement

Multiple AM machine scheduling problem is the problem of determining [3]:

(i) The allocation of heterogenous parts into jobs and
(ii) The utilization order of jobs on different AM machines with different charac-
teristics
To optimize one or more performance criterion such as makespan, total or
average cost, and total or maximum tardiness. Figure 1 represents a schematic
representation of multiple AM machine scheduling problem.
Parts, jobs and machines are denoted by i, j and m, respectively. I is the set of
parts, J is the set of jobs and M is the set of machines. Each part has a height (hi ),
area (ai), volume (vi ), width (wi ), length (li ) and release date (ri ). Machines may
have different specifications represented as follows:
VTm Time spent to form per unit volume of material by machine m
HTm Time spent for powder-layering by machine m, which is repeated in each
layer in accordance with the highest part in the job
SETm Set-up time needed for initializing and cleaning machine m
MAm The production area of the machine m’s building platform
MWm The width of the machine m’s building platform
MLm The length of the machine m’s building platform
 172

Fig. 1 A schematic representation of multiple AM machine scheduling problem, adapted from Li et al. [13]
I. Kucukkoc
Metal Additive Manufacturing: Nesting vs. Scheduling 173

As indicated by Kucukkoc [3] the AM machine scheduling problem is different

from the batch scheduling problem in several aspects. One of the most peculiar
features of the AM machine scheduling problem is that the production time of a
job is calculated via a function based on some characteristics of parts produced in
that job (whereas in a classical batch scheduling problem the job production time
is known in advance). That makes it impossible to calculate the processing time
of any individual part prior to scheduling (i.e. deciding on the part content of the
job on a specific machine). Also, different combinations of parts in jobs lead to
different performance measures and costs in the AM machine scheduling problem.
Furthermore, increasing the utilization of batch scheduling machines is preferred as
it generally has a positive impact on minimizing the makespan or cost. However, this
is not always the case for AM machine scheduling problems. This chapter addresses
to this main issue. The AM machine scheduling problem includes both nesting and
scheduling problems each of which is NP-hard itself.
Using the notation provided, the production time (PTmj ) and the completion time
(Cmj ) for job j on machine m can be calculated using Eqs. (1) and (2), respectively
[3]. Cm0 is assumed to be 0 (see Eq. (3)).

P T mj = SET m · Zmj + V T m · vi · Xmj i + H T m

* i∈I +
· max hi · Xmj i ; ∀m ∈ M, j ∈ J.
i∈I
(1)
Cmj ≥ Cm(j −1) + P T mj ; ∀m ∈ M, j ∈ J. (2)

Cm0 = 0; ∀m ∈ M. (3)
PTmj is constituted of three terms: (a) set-up time, (b) material release time, and
(c) powder-layering time. To include the set-up, a binary decision variable (Zmj )
is utilized. It gets the value of 1 if job j is utilized on machine m, 0 otherwise.
The material release time is related to the total volume of parts included in job
j on machine m. Xmji is a binary variable which gets 1 if part i is assigned to
job j on machine m, 0 otherwise. Lastly, powder-layering time is related to the
highest part included in a job. This indicates that grouping parts with similar heights
has a potential to minimize job production time. The ultimate goal is to minimise
makespan and the assumptions can be summarized as follows:
– Part details are known exactly.
– There is more than one machine with the same or different characteristics.
– At least one of the machines has the capability of fabricating the part with the
maximum width/length/height.
– Any number of machines can be operated simultaneously.
– There is no restriction between any two parts to be produced in the same job.
– The building orientation of parts is known.
– All parts are made of the same material.
– No part can be removed until the job is completed.
The following section presents the solution method used for numerical problems.
174 I. Kucukkoc

4 Solution Methodology

GA has been utilized successfully in solving various scheduling problems. Accord-

ing to Lee [20], over 55% of the researches on operations management belong to
operations planning and control. Moreover, 57% of those studies address scheduling
problems. Therefore, this chapter applies GA utilized in Kucukkoc et al. [21] for the
solution of complex scheduling problem with the aim of optimizing two different
objectives under two scenarios, i.e. maximizing area utilization and minimizing
makespan. The general outline of the GA is presented in Fig. 2.
This is a classical GA which applies tournament selection to determine parents
which will undergo genetic operators (crossover and mutation). The chromosomes
are permutation-coded, where each gene represents a part number. So, the length
of the chromosome is equal to the number of parts to be scheduled. A single-
point crossover is applied ensuring that no gene duplicates on the chromosome.
Mutation is applied in two ways using either an insert function or a swap function.
The new generation is formed replacing the worst chromosomes in the population.
The algorithm terminates if there is no improvement within a certain number of
iterations (MaxIt) determined priorly.
The critical point of the utilized algorithm is the Nesting() function employed in
decoding procedure given in Fig. 3. This function is employed to check whether the

Fig. 2 The main outline of the GA

Metal Additive Manufacturing: Nesting vs. Scheduling 175

Fig. 3 Decoding procedure applied to evaluate chromosomes (AP denotes available parts)

selected part can be placed in the current job on the current machine. It ensures that
the parts assigned to a job on a specific machine can be placed on the corresponding
machine’s platform with no overlap. More details on the search mechanisms of the
algorithm can be found in Kucukkoc et al. [21].
176 I. Kucukkoc

5 Numerical Examples
®
The algorithm has been coded in JAVA and run on Intel Core™ i7-6700HQ CPU
@2.60 GHz with 16 GB of RAM. Each problem has been solved three times and the
best result is reported. Two different problems are constituted by different number of
parts and machines. Two types of machines are considered and their details are given
in Table 1. Parts data have been provided in Appendix (retrieved from [21]). The
population size, crossover rate and mutation rate are 30, 0.6 and 0.1, respectively.
The algorithm was terminated when there is no improvement within 3000 iterations.
The values of these parameters have been determined through some preliminary
tests.
The first problem aims to schedule a total of 18 parts on two machines (one from
type M1 and one from type M2). The parts range considered in this problem is
P1-P18 (see Appendix). The total area of the parts is 2616.6 cm2 .
Figure 4 shows the solution obtained when the problem has been solved with the
aim of minimizing makespan. As can be seen from this, the makespan is 507.33 h
and the total area allocated is 4375 cm2 . Figure 5 presents another solution, which
requires one fewer (six) jobs, for the same problem. The makespan for this solution
is 627.07 h and the total area utilized is 3750 cm2 . When the two alternative
solutions are compared, it is obvious that the area utilization of the second solution
is higher (69.77% versus 59.80%). However, the makespan of the first solution is
much lower than that of the second solution.

Table 1 Machine details

Machine Height Width Length Area Set-up HT VT
ID (cm) (cm) (cm) (cm2 ) Time (h) (h/cm) (h/cm3 )
M1 32.5 25 25 625 2.00 1 0.030864
M2 32.5 25 25 625 1.00 1 0.030864

Fig. 4 The first alternative solution for problem-1 (507.33 h, 4375 cm2 )
Metal Additive Manufacturing: Nesting vs. Scheduling 177

Fig. 5 The second alternative solution for problem-1 (627.07 h, 3750 cm2 )

Fig. 6 The first alternative solution for problem-2 (653.31 h, 5625 cm2 )

The second problem involves 24 parts (ranging between P17 and P40, see
Appendix) and 4 machines (2xM1 and 2xM2). Note that in the algorithm the parts
have been re-numerated starting from 1. The total area of the parts is 4066.6 cm2 .
The two alternative solutions obtained for this problem using GA are given in Figs.
6 and 7. A total of 9 jobs have been utilized in the first solution, with performance
measures of 653.31 h makespan and 5625 cm2 total area utilized. The second
alternative solution requires two more (i.e., 11) jobs and the makespan is 636.06 h
while the total utilized area is 6875 cm2 . As clearly seen from these results, the
second solution requires a greater number of jobs and so total area (22% larger than
the first solution). However, the makespan of the second solution is lower than the
makespan of the first solution.
The results of these two problems indicate that the minimization of the total
number of jobs (or total area required) does not always correspond to the mini-
mization of the makespan. Therefore, nesting problem needs to be considered in
178 I. Kucukkoc

Fig. 7 The second alternative solution for problem-2 (636.06 h, 6875 cm2 )

the AM machine scheduling problem as a constraint to ensure feasibility. However,

considering it as an ultimate goal may yield poor solutions in terms of the makespan.

6 Conclusion and Future Research

The multiple AM machine scheduling problem with two-dimensional nesting

constraints has been studied in this chapter. A GA algorithm has been utilized to
solve numerical examples and represent detailed nesting solutions. The aim was to
investigate the relationship between the total area utilized and the makespan (i.e.
the completion time of the latest part in the system). The results of the numerical
examples indicated that there is no direct relationship between minimizing the
number of jobs and minimization of the makespan. In both problems provided,
the solutions with fewer number of jobs (and so area utilized) took longer to
have all parts completed. One limitation of this study is that more experiments
are needed to conclude that area utilization does not correspond to minimizing
makespan. The author’s ongoing work aim to design and conduct a comprehensive
set of experimental tests for this aim. Developing new algorithms eliminating some
assumptions of the problem can also be a research for future studies.
Metal Additive Manufacturing: Nesting vs. Scheduling 179

A.1 Appendix

Table A.1 Part details

Part hi wi li ai vi ri
P1 16.7 18.8 16.0 300.8 1573.8 6.25
P2 8.8 6.7 22.8 152.8 421.3 7.35
P3 20.3 9.3 2.1 19.5 147.8 9.83
P4 7.4 21.6 3.9 84.2 285.2 20.95
P5 27.3 14.9 4.1 61.1 583.3 36.58
P6 25.8 23.2 12.9 299.3 3282.5 51.50
P7 14.5 22.2 6.7 148.7 1265.5 56.35
P8 3.5 24.6 15.3 376.4 723.3 69.90
P9 20.4 20.5 1.0 20.5 278.5 75.07
P10 23.3 6.8 13.4 91.1 1051.8 86.00
P11 26.3 4.0 5.0 20.0 201.9 93.03
P12 12.8 5.9 21.0 123.9 866.1 93.10
P13 28.4 21.8 15.3 333.5 7347.6 97.15
P14 10.9 23.2 3.2 74.2 333.6 97.25
P15 14.1 19.6 13.7 268.5 2956.0 101.75
P16 3.9 3.6 3.1 11.2 32.5 106.95
P17 3.2 10.6 13.1 138.9 265.6 107.58
P18 24.6 7.3 12.6 92.0 1387.4 115.55
P19 7.1 21.2 20.0 424.0 1086.0 128.37
P20 25.2 8.4 21.6 181.4 3559.2 132.32
P21 29.6 16.4 10.6 173.8 2902.9 134.15
P22 21.1 10.8 8.0 86.4 854.6 136.65
P23 25.2 22.0 4.9 107.8 1986.0 138.30
P24 28.2 9.5 14.9 141.6 2974.3 149.48
P25 22.9 6.3 4.6 29.0 408.2 164.08
P26 24.2 17.7 9.4 166.4 1271.4 167.45
P27 19.0 1.0 20.9 20.9 252.4 177.23
P28 26.6 11.2 19.7 220.6 3740.9 206.40
P29 18.5 12.5 8.2 102.5 991.9 219.62
P30 10.1 15.4 11.9 183.3 1377.6 228.55
P31 24.5 24.5 24.2 592.9 11,122.9 242.90
P32 30.6 23.0 11.9 273.7 5234.1 244.87
P33 3.1 14.7 9.9 145.5 274.6 245.08
P34 18.9 17.4 14.8 257.5 2628.4 248.18
P35 11.2 1.7 23.9 40.6 206.9 258.98
P36 4.6 19.5 10.4 202.8 639.5 268.42
P37 23.4 2.6 15.9 41.3 431.5 279.77
P38 7.5 13.7 18.5 253.5 968.2 286.25
P39 12.7 8.2 1.4 11.5 95.0 290.73
P40 22.7 14.3 12.5 178.8 2306.2 294.53
180 I. Kucukkoc

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System and Methods for
Blockchain-Inspired Digital Game Asset
Management

Gianluca Ragnoni

Abstract In 2017, IGT’s Italian Software Architecture team, identified some

features of the emerging blockchain, as enabling technologies to manage a ledger
(or data store) that used cryptography and digital signatures to prove identity and
authenticity (G. Ragnoni, E. Martire, F. Battini, System and Methods for Blockchain-
Based Digital Lottery Ticket Generation and Distribution USPTO, Application
Number 15/916,620 Filing date Mar 9 2018. https://patents.google.com/patent/
US10931457B2). The idea was to design and implement a fully managed ledger
database that provided a transparent, immutable and cryptographically verifiable
platform for managing the creation of digital assets (e.g. game ticket) and the
transfer of asset’s ownership between users. Following the above idea, the team
designed and implemented Transaction Certification Authority (TCA), an IGT
platform that tracks each and every asset’s transactions and maintains a complete
and verifiable history of ownership change over time. The aim of this paper is to
present TCA, its features and functioning mechanism.

Keywords Blockchain · Asset management · Digital game

1 Context and Concepts

The digitalization era is highlighting new opportunities to enhance customer

experiences, providing new advanced, personalized, tailored and improved services
for all actors involved into the Gaming Value-Chain [1].
Within this context, IGT built a digital gaming vision intending to unleash in-
store digital experiences providing new digital journeys for customers within the
Point of Sales. In this scope, IGT already provided several digital services to the
customers enabling to get info, filling playslip, checking winnings through digital

G. Ragnoni ()
IGT, Rome, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 181
A. Masone et al. (eds.), Optimization and Data Science: Trends and Applications,
AIRO Springer Series 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86286-2_14
182 G. Ragnoni

touchpoints (e.g. mobile devices, self stations, etc.). In addition, mixed paper-digital
services have already been provided enabling customers to participate to a digital
lottery starting from a paper.
With the aim to have a full in-store digital experience the main challenge is
related to provide the ability to manage digital tickets maintaining:
• The gaming model currently in place, where customers are not obliged to open
game account to participate to the Lottery;
• The advanced security and anti-tampering measures integrated on the paper
tickets.
Exploiting some features of the emerging Blockchain model [2, 3], IGT designed
and developed a proprietary digital asset management solution called Transaction
Certification Authority (TCA) for digital ticket management.
TCA is a fully managed ledger database that provides a transparent, immutable
and cryptographically verifiable platform for managing the creation of digital assets
and the transfer of assets’ ownership between users. With TCA, the transaction’s
change history is immutable, it cannot be altered or deleted, using cryptography,
and the client can easily verify that there have been no unintended modifications to
asset’s ownership.
The article is structured as follows: in Sect. 2 the TCA systems are described
in terms of Scenario, Actors and Concept and Transactions available; in Sect. 3,
the security requirements addressed by project referring to security standards are
summarized; Sect. 4 is devoted to conclusions.

2 TCA

In this section the TCA systems are described in terms of Scenario, Actors and
Concept and Transactions available.
The first subsection describes the main use case introducing a logical model to
address the business requirements, the second subsection details the model of the
project in terms of actors of the system, actions (or transaction) that each actor can
do, rules of the actions, finally the type of transactions available in the system are
explained using interaction diagrams.

2.1 Scenario

TCA is a platform designed to certify the ownership of arbitrary digital assets,

regarding asset issuing and asset transferring between users, ensuring anonymity
of the users, confidentiality, data integrity, non-repudiation, process transparency
and reproducibility.
System and Methods for Blockchain-Inspired Digital Game Asset Management 183

Transaction Genesis Transaction Transfer T1 Transaction Transfer T2

Executor: ISSUER Executor: A Executor: B

Operational
Asset Owner: C
Transaction New Asset Owner: A New Asset Owner: B New Asset Owner: C

ISSUER A A B B C

Fig. 1 Scenario A

Transaction Genesis Transaction Transfer T1 Transaction Transfer T2

Executor: ISSUER Executor: A Executor: B

Operational
Asset Owner: C
Transaction New Asset Owner: A New Asset Owner: B New Asset Owner: C

ISSUER A A B B C

Transaction Confirm 1 Transaction Confirm 2 Transaction Confirm 3

Executor: A Executor: B Executor: C

Operational
Transaction

Fig. 2 Scenario B

Transaction Genesis Transaction Transfer T1 Transaction Transfer T2

Executor: ISSUER Executor: A Executor: B

Operational
Transaction New Asset Owner: A New Asset Owner: B New Asset Owner: C
Asset Owner: B

ISSUER A A B B C

Transaction Confirm 1 Transaction Confirm 2 Transaction Rollback

Executor: A Executor: B Executor: C or B

Operational
Transaction

Fig. 3 Scenario C

By means of TCA a client with a specific clearance can register an asset on TCA;
after registration users can transfer assets each other.
The TCA allows implicit agreement or explicit agreement when a new owner
receives a digital asset: if the agreement is implicit (explained in the example in
Fig. 1) when a digital asset is transferred to him, he automatically becomes the new
owner, instead if the agreement is explicit (explained in the examples in Figs. 2 and
3) he may confirm or deny (rollback) the transfer.
184 G. Ragnoni

2.2 Actors and Concepts

TCA adopts a model involving the following actors:

(i) The Issuers: the actors issuing digital assets;
(ii) Clients: the actors owning and transferring assets;
(iii) The Transaction Certification Authority (TCA);
(iv) One or more external Certification Authority (CA), used as a trusted third party
external entity to guarantee immutability.
Each actor has a pair of asymmetric keys and it is identified by its public key
(pubkey).
Issuer and customers interact through transactions.

2.3 Transactions

There are two types of transaction:

Operational Transaction Invoked by the subject issuing or transferring the asset;
it allows to record the new ownership of the asset. Each transaction is the transfer
of ownership of a digital asset (DA) from a public key called SOURCE, to another
public key called DESTINATION. Each transaction is linked to the previous owner
through the transaction hash.
• Genesis Transaction: this transaction allows to register an asset on the TCA and
assigns its ownership to a client. It is always invoked by the Issuer.
• Transfer Transaction: allows to register the transfer of an asset from the current
owner to a new owner.
Control Transaction If enabled, it is invoked by the client that receives an assets
or, in case of rollback, by one any of the clients involved in the transfer, to confirm or
deny the change of ownership. Each control transaction is linked to the operational
transaction to be confirmed or rolled back.
• Confirm Transaction: this transaction allows the destination to confirm the
willingness to receive the asset.
• Rollback Transaction: this transaction allows the destination to reject the asset
or the source to abort the transfer if the destination has not confirmed it yet.
Each transaction is authorized by the TCA and the SOURCE using a digital
signature.
Each transaction is recorded also in a block in a public transaction ledger (PTL)
by TCA.
Each block is hashed and is linked to the previous block via hash value in the
PTL.
System and Methods for Blockchain-Inspired Digital Game Asset Management 185

Each block hash is also timestamped with a signature provided by CA. This
feature guarantees the immutability via an external trusted third party entity.
Examples:
• Scenario A: in Fig. 1, control transaction disabled (implicit agreement). Only
operational transaction. The final owner of the digital asset is C.
• Scenario B: in Fig. 2, control transaction enabled (explicit agreement), with
confirm transactions. The final owner of the digital asset is C.
• Scenario C: in Fig. 3, control transaction enabled (explicit agreement), with
confirm and rollback transactions. The final owner of the digital asset is B.
Figure 4 depicts a sequence diagram showing the message flow of Genesis
Transaction with implicit non-repudiation. Genesis Transaction has three actors:
a customer (Customer1) requiring an asset generation from an authorized issuer
(Issuer) that generates the asset, the TCA as a digital notary to guarantee issuing,
transfer and ownership of the digital asset.
In message #1 Customer1 requires asset issuing to the Issuer, specifying his
public key as the destination for the asset.
In message #2 Issuer creates a digital asset (DA) and creates a message (MSG)
contains DA, the origin of DA (or the source) inserting his public key and the
destination of the asset using the public key received from the Customer1.
In message #3 Issuer signs MSG with his private key (DS Issuer).
In message #4 Issuer sends MSG and DS Issuer to the TCA.
In message #5 TCA does a set of checks as for example if the Issuer is authorized
to issue the asset, if asset is new and it is well formed syntactically etc . . . If checks
are positive, TCA signs MSG (DS TCA), creates a new transaction with MSG,
DS Issuer and DS TCA and saves the transaction in the Public Transaction Ledger
(PTL).

Fig. 4 Genesis transaction

186 G. Ragnoni

Fig. 5 Transfer transaction

In messages #6, #7 transaction is sent back to Issuer and to the Customer1. At

the end of this process, Customer1 is the owner of the asset.
Looking at the Transaction ID1 to the left of the diagram, we can see the message
(MSG) containing the asset (DA), the issuer of the asset (or SOURCE) represented
by the public key of the Issuer, the owner of the asset (or DESTINATION)
represented by the public key of the Customer1. Then the message signatures made
by the Issuer and by the TCA.
Figure 5 depicts a sequence diagram showing the messages flow of Transfer
Transaction with implicit non-repudiation. A typical Transfer Transaction has three
actors: a customer (Customer2) requiring the transfer of an asset from another
customer (Customer1) that owns the asset and the TCA that acts as a digital notary
to guarantee correctness of transfer and new ownership of the digital asset. In the
Transfer Transaction the current owner of the asset (SOURCE), has the right to
transfer the asset to someone else (DESTINATION).
In message #1 Customer2 requires an asset transfer to Customer1 specifying
his public key as the new destination of the asset. In arrow #2 Customer1 creates
a message (MSG) contains DA, the origin of DA (or the source) inserting his
public key and the destination of the asset using the public key received from the
Customer2. Customer1 signs MSG with his private key (DS Customer1).
In message #3 Customer1 send MSG and DS Customer1 to TCA.
In message #4 TCA does a set of checks as for example if the Customer1 is the
current owner of asset and has the right to transfer. If true, TCA digital sign MSG
(DS TCA), creates a new transaction with MSG, DS Customer1 and DS TCA and
saves the transaction in the Public Transaction Ledger (PTL).
In messages #5, #6 transaction is sent back to Customer1 and to the Customer2.
At the end of this process, Customer2 is the owner of the asset.
Looking at the Transaction ID2 to the left of the diagram, we can see the message
(MSG) containing the asset (DA), the previous owner of the asset (or SOURCE)
represents by the public key of the Customer1, the current owner of the asset
System and Methods for Blockchain-Inspired Digital Game Asset Management 187

(or DESTINATION) represents by the public key of the Customer2, the message
signatures made by the Customer1 and by the TCA.

3 Security Features

According to the standard ISO/IEC 27000:2018 [4], information security is the

protection of confidentiality, integrity, availability (often denoted by acronym CIA);
the same standard also includes other requirements, as authenticity, accountability,
non-repudiation, and reliability. In the well-known glossary CNSS [5], data security
is described according to the CIA requirements: “The protection of information
and information systems from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption,
modification, or destruction in order to provide confidentiality, integrity, and
availability”.
The definition in the ISACA [6] glossary is similar: “Ensures that only authorized
users (confidentiality) have access to accurate and complete information (integrity)
when required (availability).”
In the framework of the TCA project, among the ISO/IEC 27000:2018 require-
ments, we select as relevant, the following items to implement:
• Confidentiality: information is not made available or disclosed to unauthorized
individuals, entities, or processes;
• Integrity: information is complete and correct, in particular, information cannot
be modified in an unauthorized or undetected manner;
• Authenticity: each entity involved in some operation should provide a proof that
it is what it claims to be;
• Non-Repudiation: each entity involved in some operation cannot deny having
executed its own actions.
Other requirements are not managed directly, since they are implied by the previ-
ous ones (accountability is implied by integrity, authenticity and non-repudiation),
or they are out of the scope of this study (availability, reliability).

4 Conclusion

In the gaming context, TCA platform can enable ticket receipt dematerialization
inside the retail store with a seamless integration with current ecosystem providing
a “Phygital” (physical and digital) experience for the user that can have a digital
version of ticket receipt (the asset) in their mobile device, with the same security
features of the physical one.
Moreover TCA, can play the role of “layer 2 infrastructure” integrating itself
with a public blockchain infrastructure. In fact, since 2017, public blockchain infras-
tructures have been evolved and nowadays, although there are a lot of blockchain
188 G. Ragnoni

available, capable to manage directly arbitrary digital assets, according to experts

and community thoughts [7], specific domain applications will be necessary on top
of blockchain, in order to manage specific digital assets in a scalable way. Playing
this role, TCA could be a specific domain application that manages digital tickets
for gaming companies that want to enable ticket receipt dematerialization. In this
scenario, public blockchain infrastructure can replace the Certification Authority
saving only block’s fingerprint of transactions managed by TCA.
TCA model has been patented [8] in US with number US10931457B2 and is
already integrated in the Italian Digital National Lottery.

References

1. The World Lottery Summit 2018—Jean Jorgensen Merit Award for Innovation—“Lottomatica
Lottery Ticket Digitalization Based on Blockchain Model”
2. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System—Satoshi Nakamoto. https://bitcoin.org/
bitcoin.pdf
3. Blockchain Series (MOOC)—University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sci-
ences. https://www.coursera.org/learn/blockchain-basics
4. ISO/IEC 27000:2018. ISO/IEC 27000:2018. https://www.iso.org/standard/73906.html (2018)
5. Committee on National Security Systems. National Information Assurance (IA) Glossary, CNSS
Instruction No. 4009, 26 Apr 2010. https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=7447
6. ISACA. Information Systems Audit and Control Association. http://www.isaca.org/Knowledge-
Center/Documents/Glossary/glossary.pdf (2021)
7. 102 blockchain leaders share their insights into the use of blockchain both now and into the
future. Taken from https://zage.io/report/pdf/blockchain-102.pdf
8. Ragnoni, G., Martire, E., Battini, F.: Systems and methods for blockchain-based digital lottery
ticket generation and distribution. USPTO, Application Number 15/916,620—Filing date 9 Mar
2018. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10931457B2