Assignment constraints in shared transportation services

Abstract

Competitive markets, increased fuel costs, and underutilized vehicle fleets are characteristics that currently define the logistics sector. Given an increasing pressure to act in a manner that is economically and ecologically efficient, mechanisms that help to benefit from idle capacities are on the rise. In the Sharing Economy, collaborative usage is typically organized through platforms that facilitate the exchange of goods or services. Our study examines a collaborative pickup and delivery problem where carriers can exchange customer requests. The aim is to quantify the potential of horizontal collaborations under a centralized framework. An Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search is developed to solve yet unsolved test instances. A computational study confirms the results of past studies which have reported cost savings between 20 and 30%. In addition, the numerical results indicate an even greater potential for settings with a high degree of regional customer overlap. Unfortunately, these high collaborative gains typically come at the cost of an uneven customer distribution, which is known to be one of the main barriers that prevent companies from entering into horizontal collaborations. To generate acceptable solutions for all participants, several constraints are included in the model. The introduction of these constraints to single-vehicle instances, decreases the potential collaborative gain considerably. Surprisingly, this does not happen in more realistic settings of carriers operating multiple vehicles. Overall, the computational study shows that centralized collaborative frameworks have the potential to generate considerable cost savings, while at the same time limiting customer or profit share losses and enabling carriers to keep some of their most valued customers. Keywords Logistics • Collaborations • Transportation • ALNS • Central planning 1 Introduction Competitive markets, increased fuel costs, underutilized vehicle fleets and stricter customer demands are characteristics that currently define the logistics sector. Due to the increasing B Margaretha Gansterer

Design of Supply Chain Transportation Pooling Strategy for Reducing CO2 Emissions Using a Simulation-Based Methodology: A Case Study

“…One of the main concepts for improving the sustainability of supply chains is the collaboration between stakeholders by increasing the efficiency of their shared resources [7][8][9][10]. There are two types of collaboration: vertical collaboration and horizontal collaboration.…”

“…Vertical collaboration involves cooperation between stakeholders in the same supply chain, while horizontal collaboration includes cooperation between companies at the same level that can provide the same goods or services within a supply chain [11,12]. In the literature, there is a large amount of research related to vertical collaboration in the logistics industry [9][10][11]. However, horizontal collaboration such as shared freight carrier and freight consolidation has not received the same degree of attention [7,8,13], etc.…”

“…Moreover, in the literature, collaboration in supply chain have two types of benefits: economic benefits and environmental aspects benefits. A recent example of research is Gansterer et al [9], which found that cost savings of 20-30% were made by carrier collaboration. The reduction in vehicle kilometers is demonstrated as a component of cost savings.…”

Shared public transport within a physical internet framework: Reviews, conceptualization and expected challenges under COVID-19 pandemic

“…The use of PT's residual capacity to transport cargo brings up the issue of deciding on the shareability issue in order to assess whether or not to mix the two flows for a given journey. This decision-making process depends on the geographical constraints of departure and arrival sites, travel times, generated deviation, and congestion rates [ 127 ].…”

“… Review The feasibility problem increases in carpool mode share. [ 127 ] (Gansterer et al, 2020) Australia Urban Shared transportation Freight Collaborative pickup and delivery problem. Empirical Considerable cost savings by limiting customer or profit share losses and enabling carriers to keep some of their most valued customers.…”