Waiting Strategies for Anticipating Service Requests from Known Customer Locations

Barrett W. Thomas ()
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Barrett W. Thomas: Department of Management Sciences, University of Iowa, 108 John Pappajohn Business Building, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-1994

Transportation Science, 2007, vol. 41, issue 3, 319-331

Abstract: This paper considers a dynamic and stochastic routing problem in which information about customer locations and probabilistic information about future service requests are used to maximize the expected number of customers served by a single uncapacitated vehicle. The problem is modeled as a Markov decision process, and analytical results on the structure of the optimal policy are derived. For the case of a single dynamic customer, we completely characterize the optimal policy. Using the analytical results, we propose a real-time heuristic and demonstrate its effectiveness compared with a series of other intuitively appealing heuristics. We also use computational tests to determine the heuristic value of knowing both customer locations and probabilistic information about future service requests.

Keywords: dynamic vehicle routing; stochastic demand; online strategies; real-time heuristics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:41:y:2007:i:3:p:319-331

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