Design and optimization of dynamic routing problems with anticipation of orders and transport times

This chapter a routing and scheduling problem of forwarding agent handling lessthan-truckload (LTL) freight. Nonetheless, the underlying scheduling problem has to be solved within a broad range of engineering problems (e.g., scheduling of multi-product batch plants or prototypes). On the one hand, the performance of these companies is influenced by unknown customer orders, increasingly received shortly before the actual pickup. On the other hand, the transport times between two consecutive points in a tour vary. The objektive is to avoid lateness of orders and increase equipment utilization. We evaluate the benefits of dynamic optimization anticipation varying transport times and customer orders. Newly arriving information are immediately inserted into the system and the optimization is restarted. In the following we present one part of the model with anticipation of travel times. We model a multi-stage mixed integer problem that is able to operate under variable demand and transport time conditions. For anticipation of transport times, a piecewise constant approximation of time zones identified beforehand is used to maintain the FIFO property. Numerical examples with customers distribution common in forwarding industries are presented to illustrate the approach.