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Recent Advances in Vehicle Routing Optimization: Practical Applications and Research Insights

This presentation by Bruce L. Golden outlines recent research in vehicle routing and logistics, emphasizing practical applications derived from real-world data and collaborations with organizations such as UPS and RouteSmart Technologies. It discusses the Billing Cycle Vehicle Routing Problem, which aims to create efficient, balanced routes for utility companies facing challenges with evolving customer demands. Using techniques from key optimization courses, the research seeks to improve service delivery while adhering to regulatory constraints and ensuring customer satisfaction.

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Recent Advances in Vehicle Routing Optimization: Practical Applications and Research Insights

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  1. Optimization and Applications:Some Recent Research by Bruce L. Golden Decision & Information Technologies Research Day, Sept. 7, 2007

  2. Broad Areas of Research (last two years) • Practical Vehicle Routing/Logistics • Si Chen, Bob Shuttleworth, Chris Groer, Namrata Cornick, Damon Gulczynski, Xia Wang • Heuristic Search in Combinatorial Optimization • William Mennell, Xia Wang, John Silberholz, Daliborka Stanojevic, Ioannis Gamvros, Andy Hall, Inbal Yahav, Yupei Xiong, K-H. Loh

  3. Real-World Focus • Most of my research in vehicle routing/logistics is motivated by real-world problems • UPS (Baltimore), RouteSmart Technologies (Columbia) • We have access to real-world data • I helped four Ph.D. students obtain paid summer internships this past summer • UPS (2), BAE Systems (1), UMMC (1) • Let me describe one research project (Groer, Golden, Wasil)

  4. The Billing Cycle Vehicle Routing Problem • The problem was described to us by RouteSmart Technologies • Over time, a utility company’s meter-reading routes become inefficient, imbalanced, and fractured • Utilities wish to remedy this situation by shifting customers to different billing days and routes subject to certain constraints • We began with a real-world data set of 17,775 customers

  5. Imbalanced Routes • Each customer is assigned to one of 20 billing days • Three meter readers are working each day • The number of customers visited each day varies between 400 and 1300 • Daily route length varies similarly • A utility company in this situation has several goals

  6. Goals/Constraints of the Utility Company • Create more efficient routes for each day of the billing cycle • Balance the workload across the billing cycle, in terms of customers serviced and total route length • Regulatory and customer service considerations prevent the utility company from shifting a customer’s billing day by more than a few days from one month to the next • These were put in place to eliminate variation in customers’ bills due to utility company policies

  7. Concluding Remarks • We use techniques from the following Ph.D. courses to solve this problem • BMGT 830: LP • BMGT 831: Networks • BMGT 833: IP • Can we recover efficient routes and balanced workdays? • If so, how many months does it take?

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