A column generation approach for the route planning problem in fourth party logistics

Yi Tao (), Ek Peng Chew (), Loo Hay Lee () and Yuran Shi ()
Additional contact information
Yi Tao: Guangdong University of Technology
Ek Peng Chew: National University of Singapore
Loo Hay Lee: National University of Singapore
Yuran Shi: National University of Singapore

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2017, vol. 68, issue 2, 165-181

Abstract: Abstract In this paper, we address the route planning problem in fourth party logistics (4PL). The problem calls for the selection of the logistics companies by a 4PL provider to optimize the routes of delivering goods through a transportation network. The concept of 4PL emerged in response to the shortfall in services capabilities of traditional third party logistics and has been proven to be capable of integrating logistics resources in order to fulfill complex transportation demands. A mixed-integer programming model is established for the planning problem with setup cost and edge cost discount policies which are commonly seen in practice. We propose a column generation approach combined with graph search heuristic to efficiently solve the problem. The good performance in terms of the solution quality and computational efficiency of our approach is shown through extensive numerical experiments on various scales of test instances. Impacts of cost policies on routing decision are also investigated and managerial insights are drawn.

Keywords: routing; route planning; fourth party logistics; column generation; heuristics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41274-016-0024-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:68:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1057_s41274-016-0024-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... search/journal/41274

DOI: 10.1057/s41274-016-0024-3

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Operational Research Society is currently edited by Tom Archibald and Jonathan Crook

More articles in Journal of the Operational Research Society from Palgrave Macmillan, The OR Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().