Near real-time loadplan adjustments for less-than-truckload carriers

Ian Herszterg, Yassine Ridouane, Natashia Boland, Alan Erera and Martin Savelsbergh

European Journal of Operational Research, 2022, vol. 301, issue 3, 1021-1034

Abstract: We design and implement decision support technology to assist dispatchers in the daily management of loadplans in less-than-truckload service networks. The freight volume that enters a service network on the day of operations deviates from the forecast freight volume used to create the loadplan. These deviations cause inefficiencies when the capacity on planned freight paths is no longer sufficient and delays result in missed service promises. Near real-time loadplan adjustments, i.e., rerouting freight on alternate paths, can improve on-time performance without incurring additional cost (e.g., without purchasing additional capacity). The problem of identifying effective alternate freight paths is modeled on a time-expanded network and computationally efficient heuristics are developed for its solution in order to ensure that there is sufficient time to put the adjusted loadplan in place. We demonstrate the practical viability and value of these heuristics in a computational study using real-life data from a large LTL carrier. The results show that on-time performance can be improved without increasing cost, i.e., by rerouting freight and using existing capacity in the service network.

Keywords: Large scale optimization; Transportation; Load planning; Heuristics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221721009954
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ejores:v:301:y:2022:i:3:p:1021-1034

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2021.11.044

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().