Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-23T14:05:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rosemberg Silva Salles.pdf: 2088047 bytes, checksum: b650ba6ed0d06eb04f22760620fd4cc1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-05-21 / This work aims to develop a procedure for collecting and physical distribution of employees by a fleet of chartered buses with the support of a geographic information system by applying the vehicle routing problem for possible optimization of routes. We begin with a review of the literature on chartered transport of employees, as well as the problems of vehicle routing and geographic information systems. Then we propose a routing procedure, which characterizes and defines the problem of collection and delivery of employees, in addition to defining the criteria for route ptimization. For this purpose, we use the software TransCAD where you do the modeling and the resolution of the problem. The procedure was applied to a case study in a large company in the Metropolitan Region of Vitória in Espírito Santo State, which provides transport their own to their employees. We generated four scenarios, analyzing the efficiency of the routes in terms of distances, travel times and operating costs. The results generated from the procedure allowed us to determine in what scenarios the routes are more efficient / Este estudo tem o objetivo de desenvolver um procedimento de coleta e distribuição física de empregados por uma frota de ônibus fretada com o apoio de um sistema de informações geográficas, aplicando o problema de roteirização de veículos para uma possível otimização das rotas. Inicialmente é feita uma revisão de literatura sobre o transporte fretado de empregados, bem como dos problemas de roteirização de veículos e dos sistemas de informações geográficas. Em seguida é proposto um procedimento de roteirização, onde se caracteriza e delimita o problema de coleta e distribuição de empregados, além de definir os critérios de otimização de rotas. Para tanto, utiliza-se o software TransCAD no qual é feita a modelagem e proposta de resolução do problema. O procedimento foi aplicado a um estudo de caso em uma empresa de grande porte na Região Metropolitana da Grande Vitória, no Estado do Espírito Santo, que oferece transporte próprio as seus empregados. Foram gerados quatro cenários, onde se analisa a eficiência das rotas em termos de distâncias, tempos de viagem e custos operacionais. Os resultados gerados a partir do procedimento permitiram determinar em que cenários as rotas se mostram mais eficientes

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-23T14:05:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 patricia rodrigues parte 1 p 1-46.pdf: 620096 bytes, checksum: 2df2214171a193891fb63f38e815ac0e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-09-16 / Problems that deal with wheelchair users public transportation are often solved by Dial a Ride Problem (DARP) with time window (Time Window TW). The goal of this type of problem is the minimization of the operation cost, in other words, the ride time respecting constraints like time windows for pickup and delivery of each user, the number of vehicles available and each vehicle capacity. This thesis proposes an exact Mixed Integer Linear Program model to solve the DARPTW. In order to apply the model in a real application, the model was tested with data provided by the Vitória City Hall Infrastructure and Transportation Secretary. The model was implemented using CPLEX software and the results showed that instances up to 20 wheelchair users can be solved optimally. Moreover, it was done an analysis for fleet used / Os problemas de transporte público de cadeirantes são comumente resolvidos pelo modelo Dial-a-Ride Problem (DARP) com janelas de tempo (Time Window - TW). Com base nas restrições de janela de tempo na origem e no destino de cada cliente, no número de veículos e na capacidade de cada um deles, deseja-se minimizar os custos de atendimento dessas demandas, ou seja, o tempo de viagem. A presente dissertação propõe um modelo de Programação Linear Inteira Mista para resolver o problema do DARP-TW. Visando uma aplicação do modelo no transporte público de cadeirantes foram utilizados dados reais fornecidos pela Secretaria de Transportes, Trânsito e Infraestrutura da Prefeitura de Vitória. O modelo foi executado no software CPLEX e os resultados mostraram que cenários com até 20 clientes podem ser resolvidos otimamente. Além disso, foi possível uma análise em relação à frota utilizada

Este trabalho teve como objetivo a avaliação de um software comercial de roteirização de veículos. Tal software, o Delivery, se propõe a ser uma ferramenta de apoio à decisão na escolha da rotina operacional de coleta e/ou distribuição física de produtos, através da criação de roteiros alternativos, o que possibilita analisar a viabilidade de implantação da rotina operacional. A proposta original consistia em desenvolver uma metodologia para testar e avaliar a qualidade das soluções geradas pelo algoritmo deste sistema. O trabalho foi conduzido através de uma pesquisa bibliográfica dos problemas clássicos de roteirização e programação de veículos, abordando suas classificações, estratégias e técnicas de solução. Um estudo em empresas que utilizam procedimentos sistemáticos de roteirização foi realizado, com a intenção de caracterizar o cenário em que se desenvolve a atividade de distribuição física. Neste estudo foi possível identificar as características mais relevantes para sistemas comerciais de roteirização de veículos, bem como caracterizar os software utilizados pelas empresas em questão. Finalmente, realizou-se uma análise empírica comparativa entre os software Delivery e TransCAD através da aplicação de problemas testes encontrados na literatura que representam algumas classes do problema de roteirização de veículos, além da aplicação de um caso real. Resultados demonstraram que a heurística do software TransCAD apresenta melhor desempenho que a do software Delivery. / The aim of this work is to evaluate a commercial computer program for vehicle routing. The software, named Delivery, has been designed to be a decision-support tool for planning goods collection and/or distribution. Its capacity for creating several alternative routes is very useful in the analysis of possible operational schemes before their actual implementation. A methodology for testing and evaluating the quality of the solution generated by the algorithm has been applied in this work, after a comprehensive literature review of the traditional vehicle routing and scheduling problems, their classification, and solution techniques and strategies. A field study in some companies that actually use a similar tool for routing their fleets has been carried out, in order to better understand how the activity is performed in real world conditions. The most important characteristics of commercial vehicle routing systems has been also identified in the field study, as well as the software used by the studied companies. Finally, a comparative empirical analysis with the software Delivery and TransCAD has been carried out. In order to compare them, test problems available in the literature, that correspond to some of the most common vehicle routing problems, and a real case application were employed. The results have shown that the heuristic of TransCAD had a better performance than the one used in Delivery.

O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar os conceitos da logística, em especial a logística de serviços, e algumas de suas ferramentas, como a roteirização de veículos e previsão de demanda por serviços, aplicadas aos serviços urbanos, neste caso o serviço de remendos em pavimentos, visando aumentar a eficiência desse serviço. O serviço de remendos, muitas vezes chamado de tapa-buracos, é uma atividade de manutenção comum nas cidades. Para observar a aplicação das ferramentas foi elaborado um estudo de caso na cidade de São Carlos. Dados sobre o serviço de remendos em pavimentos foram coletados e, com a ajuda de um sistema de informações geográficas – SIG, foram gerados roteiros que foram comparados com os dados originais. As rotas simuladas pelo SIG foram mais eficientes do que as praticadas na realidade, mostrando a utilidade dos conceitos da logística e também a utilidade do SIG na gerência da infra-estrutura urbana. A previsão de demanda por serviços de remendos não pôde ser observada devido à falta de dados históricos, fundamentais a essa etapa do trabalho. / The objective of this work is to introduce the concepts of logistics, especially the service logistics and some of its tools as the vehicle routing and the demand forecast for services, applied to the urban services, in this case the patching service in pavements in order to increase the efficiency of this service. The patching service, many times called tapa-buracos (in Brazil), is a common activity of maintenance in the cities. To observe the application of the tools one case study was elaborated in the city of São Carlos. Data about the patching service in pavements were collected and, helped by the geographic information system – GIS, routes were created and compared to the original data. The paths simulated by the GIS were more efficient than the real ones, showing the utility of the logistics concepts and also the utility of the GIS on the management of the urban infrastructure. The demand forecast for services of patching could not be observed due of the lack of historical data, essential to this part of the work.

We present solution methodologies for vehicle routing problems (VRPs) with stochastic demand, with a specific focus on the vehicle routing problem with stochastic demand (VRPSD) and the vehicle routing problem with stochastic demand and duration limits (VRPSDL). The VRPSD and the VRPSDL are fundamental problems underlying many operational challenges in the fields of logistics and supply chain management. We model the VRPSD and the VRPSDL as large-scale Markov decision processes. We develop cyclic-order neighborhoods, a general methodology for solving a broad class of VRPs, and use this technique to obtain static, fixed route policies for the VRPSD. We develop pre-decision, post-decision, and hybrid rollout policies for approximate dynamic programming (ADP). These policies lay a methodological foundation for solving large-scale sequential decision problems and provide a framework for developing dynamic routing policies. Our dynamic rollout policies for the VRPSDL significantly improve upon a method frequently implemented in practice. We also identify circumstances in which our rollout policies appear to offer little or no benefit compared to this benchmark. These observations can guide managerial decision making regarding when the use of our procedures is justifiable. We also demonstrate that our methodology lends itself to real-time implementation, thereby providing a mechanism to make high-quality, dynamic routing decisions for large-scale operations. Finally, we consider a more traditional ADP approach to the VRPSDL by developing a parameterized linear function to approximate the value functions corresponding to our problem formulation. We estimate parameters via a simulation-based algorithm and show that initializing parameter values via our rollout policies leads to significant improvements. However, we conclude that additional research is required to develop a parametric ADP methodology comparable or superior to our rollout policies.

We define an order cutoff for a retailer as a time in the day such that orders sent to the depot before this point will be delivered by tomorrow, and orders submitted after will be delivered by the day after tomorrow. The later a retailer’s cutoff, the sooner it receives its orders which helps it to maintain ideal inventory levels. Generally, not all retailers in a supply chain can have the latest cutoff since transportation takes a significant amount of time. This thesis tries to assign optimal order cutoffs to retailers. We call this an order cutoff assignment problem and we solve it using three different mathematical programming approaches. The approaches are exhaustive route generation and selection, a series of mixed integer programs, and branch-and-price. 60 sample problems were solved and results showed that branch-and-price is often the most effective method.

We define an order cutoff for a retailer as a time in the day such that orders sent to the depot before this point will be delivered by tomorrow, and orders submitted after will be delivered by the day after tomorrow. The later a retailer’s cutoff, the sooner it receives its orders which helps it to maintain ideal inventory levels. Generally, not all retailers in a supply chain can have the latest cutoff since transportation takes a significant amount of time. This thesis tries to assign optimal order cutoffs to retailers. We call this an order cutoff assignment problem and we solve it using three different mathematical programming approaches. The approaches are exhaustive route generation and selection, a series of mixed integer programs, and branch-and-price. 60 sample problems were solved and results showed that branch-and-price is often the most effective method.

This dissertation considers daily operations management for a fleet of trucks providing container pickup and delivery service to a port. Truck congestion at access points for ports may lead to serious inefficiencies in drayage operations, and the resultant cost impact to the intermodal supply chain can be significant. Recognizing that port congestion is likely to continue to be a major problem for drayage operations given the growing volume of international containerized trade, this research seeks to develop optimization approaches for maximizing the productivity of drayage firms operating at congested seaports. Specifically, this dissertation addresses two daily drayage routing and scheduling problems. In the first half of this dissertation, we study the problem of managing a fleet of trucks providing container pickup and delivery service to a port facility that experiences different access wait times depending on the time of day. For this research, we assume that the wait time can be estimated by a deterministic function. We develop a time-constrained routing and scheduling model for the problem that incorporates the time-dependent congestion delay function. The model objective is to find routes and schedules for drayage vehicles with minimum total travel time, including the waiting time at the entry to the port due to congestion. We consider both exact and heuristic solution approaches for this difficult optimization problem. Finally, we use the framework to develop an understanding of the potential impact of congestion delays on drayage operations, and the value of planning with accurate delay information. In the second half of this dissertation, we study methods for managing a drayage fleet serving a port with an appointment-based access control system. Responding to growing access congestion and its resultant impacts, many U.S. port terminals have implemented appointment systems, but little is known about the impact of such systems on drayage productivity. To address this knowledge gap, we develop a drayage operations optimization approach based on a column generation integer programming heuristic that explicitly models a time-slot port access control system. The approach determines pickup and delivery sequences with minimum transportation cost. We use the framework to develop an understanding of the potential efficiency impacts of access appointment systems on drayage operations. Findings indicate that the set of feasible drayage tasks and the fleet size required to complete them can be quite sensitive to small changes in time-slot access capacities at the port.

This research focuses on fleet management in freight transportation systems. Effective management requires effective planning and control decisions. Plans are often generated using estimates of how the system will evolve in the future; during execution, control decisions need to be made to account for differences between actual realizations and estimates. The benefits of minimum cost plans can be negated by performing costly adjustments during the operational phase. A planning approach that permits effective control during execution is proposed in this dissertation. This approach is inspired by recent work in robust optimization, and is applied to (i) dynamic asset management and (ii) vehicle routing problems. In practice, the fleet management planning is usually decomposed in two parts; the problem of repositioning empty, and the problem of allocating units to customer demands. An alternative integrated dynamic model for asset management problems is proposed. A computational study provides evidence that operating costs and fleet sizes may be significantly reduced with the integrated approach. However, results also illustrate that not considering inherent demand uncertainty generates fragile plans with potential costly control decisions. A planning approach for the empty repositioning problem is proposed that incorporates demand and supply uncertainty using interval around nominal forecasted parameters. The intervals define the uncertainty space for which buffers need to be built into the plan in order to make it a robust plan. Computational evidence suggests that this approach is tractable. The traditional approach to address the Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands (VRPSD) is through cost expectation minimization. Although this approach is useful for building routes with low expected cost, it does not directly consider the maximum potential cost that a vehicle might incur when traversing the tour. Our approach aims at minimizing the maximum cost. Computational experiments show that our robust optimization approach generates solutions with expected costs that compare favorably to those obtained with the traditional approach, but also that perform better in worst-case scenarios. We also show how the techniques developed for this problem can be used to address the VRPSD with duration constraints.

The emphasis on minimizing the logistics costs to decrease overall system costs has led the researchers to consider the interdependencies between the decisions of locating facilities and planning the routes from those facilities. The location-routing problems considering this issue are the subject of this thesis study. A two-level hierarchical distribution system is considered in which goods are delivered from the sources (plants) to the facilities (depots) and then from the facilities to the customers. The facilities are uncapacitated and operate within the shift times defined. The goods are to be delivered to the customers within their time windows by the vehicles that are capacitated. Both a mathematical model and a genetic algorithm based heuristic solution approach are proposed for this problem. We discuss the problem specific issues integrated with the general framework of the genetic algorithm applications. The computational studies are realized on a number of test problems. The results indicate that the genetic algorithm based heuristic gives satisfactory results compared with a sequential solution methodology.