Dynamic parcel routing in hyper-connected networks

Shachar Eizen, M.Sc student  Advisors: Prof. Tal Raviv & Prof. Michal Tzur 

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Abstract:
The small parcel delivery industry has grown significantly over the last few years. This raises the need for a fast delivery of large volumes of parcels, which poses major challenges and creates interesting opportunities for logistic service providers. From an economic perspective, logistic operations in urban areas, notably last-mile delivery, tend to be the most expensive segment of the logistic process. In this study, we adopt a novel framework to economize the delivery of small parcels using the Physical Internet concept. We consider a hyper-connected network of service points, where each point can be served by more than one vehicle route, and parcels may be transferred from their origin to their destination in several legs. We present a method to route and schedule the parcels while considering the service times of the vehicles at the SPs. As a first step in analyzing this intricate problem, our model assumes that the routes of the vehicles are fixed and determined in advance. In particular, we present a dynamic routing policy for the parcels in a given network and a search algorithm to accomplish the vehicle scheduling. A preliminary experiment demonstrated the merits of this approach.

Bio:

Shachar Eizen, M.Sc. student (fast track program) at the Department of Industrial Engineering at Tel Aviv University. Shachar holds a B.Sc. degree in Industrial Engineering from Tel Aviv University. Her research is supervised by Prof.Tal Raviv. and Prof.Michal Tzur.