IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/orinte/v44y2014i6p579-590.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimizing Transportation by Inventory Routing and Workload Balancing: Optimizing Daily Dray Operations Across an Intermodal Freight Network

Author

Listed:
  • Xiaoqing Sun

    (Schneider National Inc., Green Bay, Wisconsin 54306)

  • Manish Garg

    (Schneider National Inc., Green Bay, Wisconsin 54306)

  • Zahir Balaporia

    (Schneider National Inc., Green Bay, Wisconsin 54306)

  • Kendall Bailey

    (Schneider National Inc., Green Bay, Wisconsin 54306)

  • Ted Gifford

    (Schneider National Inc., Green Bay, Wisconsin 54306)

Abstract

In rail-based intermodal freight operations, full containers are moved by truck from shipper locations to rail ramps, transported via train to destination ramps, and then moved again by truck to consignee locations. We commonly refer to the roadway portions of this activity as dray operations. In a large metropolitan hub area, such as Chicago or Los Angeles, this drayage activity may involve several hundred drivers and up to 500 daily container moves to or from several distinct rail ramps. Both cost and environmental considerations drive the need to maximize driver productivity and minimize the time and miles not directly associated with moving loaded containers to or from rail ramps. In this paper, we describe a solution to this problem using a set-partitioning formulation and column-generation heuristic and report on a large-scale implementation. We focus on real-world implementation details that include (1) fast solve times to support near-real-time re-solving in the face of constantly changing data, (2) adjustments to account for traffic congestion and other operational considerations, and (3) integration with a commercial transportation management system to provide real-time data to the optimizer and to send solution recommendations to a driver-assignment process.

Suggested Citation

  • Xiaoqing Sun & Manish Garg & Zahir Balaporia & Kendall Bailey & Ted Gifford, 2014. "Optimizing Transportation by Inventory Routing and Workload Balancing: Optimizing Daily Dray Operations Across an Intermodal Freight Network," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 44(6), pages 579-590, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:44:y:2014:i:6:p:579-590
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.2014.0746
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.2014.0746
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/inte.2014.0746?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Namboothiri, Rajeev & Erera, Alan L., 2008. "Planning local container drayage operations given a port access appointment system," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 185-202, March.
    2. Martin Desrochers & Jacques Desrosiers & Marius Solomon, 1992. "A New Optimization Algorithm for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 40(2), pages 342-354, April.
    3. Alan L. Erera & Juan C. Morales & Martin Savelsbergh, 2009. "Robust Optimization for Empty Repositioning Problems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(2), pages 468-483, April.
    4. Roberto Baldacci & Enrico Bartolini & Aristide Mingozzi, 2011. "An Exact Algorithm for the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 59(2), pages 414-426, April.
    5. Martin Savelsbergh & Marc Sol, 1998. "Drive: Dynamic Routing of Independent Vehicles," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 46(4), pages 474-490, August.
    6. Yetkin Ileri & Mokhtar Bazaraa & Ted Gifford & George Nemhauser & Joel Sokol & Erick Wikum, 2006. "An optimization approach for planning daily drayage operations," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 14(2), pages 141-156, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Escudero-Santana, Alejandro & Muñuzuri, Jesús & Cortés, Pablo & Onieva, Luis, 2021. "The one container drayage problem with soft time windows," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sun, Yanshuo & Chen, Zhi-Long & Zhang, Lei, 2020. "Nonprofit peer-to-peer ridesharing optimization," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    2. Luciano Costa & Claudio Contardo & Guy Desaulniers, 2019. "Exact Branch-Price-and-Cut Algorithms for Vehicle Routing," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(4), pages 946-985, July.
    3. Qin, Hu & Moriakin, Anton & Xu, Gangyan & Li, Jiliu, 2024. "The generator distribution problem for base stations during emergency power outage: A branch-and-price-and-cut approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 318(3), pages 752-767.
    4. Capelle, Thomas & Cortés, Cristián E. & Gendreau, Michel & Rey, Pablo A. & Rousseau, Louis-Martin, 2019. "A column generation approach for location-routing problems with pickup and delivery," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 272(1), pages 121-131.
    5. Francis, Peter & Zhang, Guangming & Smilowitz, Karen, 2007. "Improved modeling and solution methods for the multi-resource routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 180(3), pages 1045-1059, August.
    6. Song, Yujian & Zhang, Jiantong & Liang, Zhe & Ye, Chunming, 2017. "An exact algorithm for the container drayage problem under a separation mode," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 231-254.
    7. Sarac, Abdulkadir & Batta, Rajan & Rump, Christopher M., 2006. "A branch-and-price approach for operational aircraft maintenance routing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 175(3), pages 1850-1869, December.
    8. Zheng, Jianfeng & Meng, Qiang & Sun, Zhuo, 2014. "Impact analysis of maritime cabotage legislations on liner hub-and-spoke shipping network design," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 234(3), pages 874-884.
    9. Taş, D. & Gendreau, M. & Dellaert, N. & van Woensel, T. & de Kok, A.G., 2014. "Vehicle routing with soft time windows and stochastic travel times: A column generation and branch-and-price solution approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 236(3), pages 789-799.
    10. Claudio Gambella & Joe Naoum-Sawaya & Bissan Ghaddar, 2018. "The Vehicle Routing Problem with Floating Targets: Formulation and Solution Approaches," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 554-569, August.
    11. Zhang, Ruiyou & Lu, Jye-Chyi & Wang, Dingwei, 2014. "Container drayage problem with flexible orders and its near real-time solution strategies," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 235-251.
    12. Hang Xu & Zhi-Long Chen & Srinivas Rajagopal & Sundar Arunapuram, 2003. "Solving a Practical Pickup and Delivery Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(3), pages 347-364, August.
    13. Samaneh Shiri & Nathan Huynh & Daniel Smith & Frank Harder, 2022. "Impact of Second-Tier Container Port Facilities on Drayage Operation," Logistics, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-21, September.
    14. Schaumann, Sarah K. & Bergmann, Felix M. & Wagner, Stephan M. & Winkenbach, Matthias, 2023. "Route efficiency implications of time windows and vehicle capacities in first- and last-mile logistics," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 311(1), pages 88-111.
    15. Benantar, A. & Abourraja, M.N. & Boukachour, J. & Boudebous, D. & Duvallet, C., 2020. "On the integration of container availability constraints into daily drayage operations arising in France: Modelling and optimization," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    16. Rosemary T. Berger & Collette R. Coullard & Mark S. Daskin, 2007. "Location-Routing Problems with Distance Constraints," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(1), pages 29-43, February.
    17. Escudero-Santana, Alejandro & Muñuzuri, Jesús & Cortés, Pablo & Onieva, Luis, 2021. "The one container drayage problem with soft time windows," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    18. Roberto Baldacci & Enrico Bartolini & Aristide Mingozzi & Roberto Roberti, 2010. "An exact solution framework for a broad class of vehicle routing problems," Computational Management Science, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 229-268, July.
    19. Mahmoudi, Monirehalsadat & Chen, Junhua & Shi, Tie & Zhang, Yongxiang & Zhou, Xuesong, 2019. "A cumulative service state representation for the pickup and delivery problem with transfers," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 351-380.
    20. Jennifer A. Pazour & Lucas C. Neubert, 2013. "Routing and Scheduling of Cross-Town Drayage Operations at J.B. Hunt Transport," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 43(2), pages 117-129, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:44:y:2014:i:6:p:579-590. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.