A Model and Algorithm for the Courier Delivery Problem with Uncertainty

We consider the Courier Delivery Problem, a variant of the Vehicle Routing Problem with time windows in which customers appear probabilistically and their service times are uncertain. We use scenario-based stochastic programming with recourse to model the uncertainty in customers and robust optimization for the uncertainty in service times. Our proposed model generates a master plan and daily schedules by maximizing the coverage of customers and the similarity of routes in each scenario while minimizing the total time spent by the couriers and the total earliness and lateness penalty. To Research supported by NSF under grant CMS-0409887 and by METRANS under grant 06-11 Corresponding author 1 

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TRANSCI
• Authors: Ilgaz Sungur, Yingtao Ren, Fernando Ordóñez, Maged M. Dessouky, Hongsheng Zhong
• Keywords: Courier Delivery Problem, Hardware, Scenario-based Stochastic Programming, Service Times, TRANSCI 2010