Range-based truck-state transition modeling method for foldable container drayage services

摘要

Manufacturing technologies of foldable containers have almost matured. The use of foldable containers might save transportation costs; however, incorporating them into drayage services also creates great challenges. The foldable container drayage (FCD) problem is formulated as a sequence-dependent multiple traveling salesman problem with time windows using a rangebased truck state transition method. An improved reactive tabu search algorithm is designed and validated to solve the FCD problem. The methodology is evaluated extensively on the basis of randomly generated instances. Compared to the use of standard containers, the use of four-in-one foldable containers can save approximately 10% on transportation costs.