Improving Transportation Services for theUniversity of the Thai Chamber of Commerce:A Case Study on Solving the Mixed-FleetVehicle Routing Problem with Split Deliveries

摘要

We present a case study on the application of techniques for solving the VehicleRouting Problem (VRP) to improve the transportation service provided by the University of TheThai Chamber of Commerce to its staff. The problem is modeled as VRP with time windows,split deliveries, and a mixed fleet. An exact algorithm and a heuristic solution procedure aredeveloped to solve the problem and implemented in the AMPL modeling language and CPLEXInteger Programming solver. Empirical results indicate that the heuristic can find relativelygood solutions in a small fraction of the time required by the exact method. We also performsensitivity analysis and find that a savings in outsourcing cost can be achieved with a smallincrease in vehicle capacity.