Time Petri nets as an evaluation tool for handling travel time uncertainty in vehicle routing solutions

Authors:
Gerrit K. Janssens;An Caris;Katrien Ramaekers
Affiliations:
Transportation Research Institute (IMOB), Agoralaan -Building D, Hasselt University, B-3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium;Transportation Research Institute (IMOB), Agoralaan -Building D, Hasselt University, B-3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium;Transportation Research Institute (IMOB), Agoralaan -Building D, Hasselt University, B-3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium
Venue:
Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
Year:
2009

Citing 2
Cited 1

Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows, Part I: Route Construction and Local Search Algorithms

Transportation Science
Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows, Part II: Metaheuristics

Transportation Science

Reliability-based route optimization of a transportation network with random arc capacities and time threshold

IUKM'11 Proceedings of the 2011 international conference on Integrated uncertainty in knowledge modelling and decision making

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Abstract

Congestion on roads leads to uncertainty in travel times, which is important in delivery of goods, especially in a business environment where high levels of customer service are expected. Delivery periods to customers might be constrained by time windows, which makes the scheduling and routing of vehicles from the supplier's side more difficult. Operations Research methods turn into heuristics for this type of application. But when, on top, uncertainty on travel times are the case, any hope of a simple and well-performing heuristic is lost. This study applies a methodology in which a heuristic is used to find a solution for scheduling and routing under deterministic travel times and, by means of simulation, though the use of Time Petri nets evaluates the sensitivity of the solution to uncertainties in travel times from one customer to the next in a route.