Abstract
Territorial design is an important long-term decision for urban delivery service companies, in contexts where customers are partitioned into districts. This study focuses on a territorial design problem given the demand frequency of each customer, i.e., the estimated percentage of days with demand, over the planning horizon. This study formulates a set partitioning model and designs a column generation based algorithm to solve the problem. The algorithm decomposes the original problem into a restricted master problem (RMP) and a series of pricing problems (PPs), each limited to one district. A dynamic programming based method is designed to solve the PPs efficiently. To further accelerate the solution processes of the PPs and of the RMP, some tailored strategies are also embedded within the algorithm. Numerical experiments are conducted to validate the contributions of the dynamic programming and of the acceleration strategies. Some tests based on real-world cases are also performed in order to derive some managerial insights to support the practitioners’ decisions on service territory design.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 82-101 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Journal | European Journal of Operational Research |
Volume | 309 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 17 Jan 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 16 Aug 2023 |
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the editor (Professor J.F. Oliveira) and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions on improving this paper. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers 72025103 and 71831008 ). Thanks are due to the referees for their valuable comments.Keywords
- Column generation
- OR in service industries
- Set partitioning
- Territorial design problem
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Information Systems and Management
- General Computer Science
- Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
- Modelling and Simulation
- Management Science and Operations Research