The Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows and Incompatibility Constraints in Cold Chain Transportation

Faheng Deng (), Hu Qin (), Jiliu Li () and Chun Cheng ()
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Faheng Deng: School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Hu Qin: School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Jiliu Li: School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Chun Cheng: Institute of Supply Chain Analytics, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Dalian 116025, China

Transportation Science, 2023, vol. 57, issue 2, 444-462

Abstract: This study investigates a new variant of the pickup and delivery problem with time windows (PDPTW) applied in cold chain transportation, which quantifies the effect of time on the quality of perishable products. Multiple commodities with incompatibility constraints are considered, where some types of products cannot be transported in a vehicle simultaneously because of their different properties and requirements for storage temperatures. The aim is to determine vehicles’ pickup and delivery routes as well as their departure times from the depot such that the travel cost and refrigeration cost of vehicles and the quality decay cost of products are minimized. We formulate this problem as a set partitioning model, which is solved exactly by a tailored branch-and-price (B&P) algorithm. To tackle the asymmetry issue arising from the pricing problem of the B&P framework, we develop a novel asymmetric bidirectional labeling algorithm. Benchmark instance sets based on real-world statistical data and classic PDPTW instance sets are first generated for this problem. Numerical results show that our B&P algorithm can solve most instances to optimality in an acceptable time frame. Moreover, our results demonstrate that integrating the refrigeration and quality decay costs into the objective function can significantly lower the total cost of cold chain transportation activities, compared with the widely adopted objective function minimizing only the travel cost.

Keywords: cold chain transportation; perishable product; pickup and delivery; incompatibility constraints; branch-and-price (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:57:y:2023:i:2:p:444-462

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