CAREER: Strategies to Improve Goods Movement: Operational Choice in Routing

本学院早期职业发展（CAREER）研究建议提供资金，以制定货物运输的运营策略。 特别是，该研究探讨了引入运营选择的车辆路径和调度的影响。 该研究考虑了工业和非营利机构货物运输路线的各种应用，包括多式联运运输业务和馆际互借，共同的主题是开发和评估创新战略。 这些应用程序涉及类似的核心优化问题，涉及车辆路径和调度与操作的选择，并说明了从引入更多的选择固有的权衡。在运输系统中允许更多的灵活性可以提高物流效率;然而，随着优化问题的范围和复杂性的扩大，在建模和解决方案阶段引入灵活性是具有挑战性的。 这个项目将设计和分析算法来解决由此产生的优化问题。 长期计划包括研究与选择在提高效率方面的价值有关的更广泛问题，以及将选择引入困难问题的复杂性。 这个职业计划的教育组成部分包括动手的学生学习，互动课程，以及促进工程多样性的计划。 这项建议包括促进学生参与妇女和少数民族运输研究的倡议，如果成功，这项研究将提高各种应用中货物运输分配系统的效率。 此外，这个职业计划的结果可以远远超出运输。 这项研究的主要成果将是一套方法工具，可供其他人用于不同的应用。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) research proposes to provide funding to develop operating strategies for goods movement. In particular, the research explores the impact of introducing operational choice into vehicle routing and scheduling. The research considers a diverse set of applications in routing for goods movement in both industry and non-profit agencies, including intermodal drayage operations and interlibrary loan delivery, with the common theme of developing and evaluating innovative strategies. These applications involve similar core optimization problems involving vehicle routing and scheduling with operational choice and illustrate the inherent tradeoffs from introducing increased choice. Allowing more flexibility in transportation systems can lead to increased logistics efficiency; yet, introducing flexibility in modeling and solution phases is challenging, as the scope and complexity of the optimization problems expand. This project will design and analyze algorithms to solve the resulting optimization problems. Longer-term plans include the study of broader issues related to the value of choice in terms of efficiency gains, as well as the complexities of introducing choice into difficult problems. The educational components of this CAREER program include hands-on student learning, interactive coursework, and programs that foster diversity in engineering. This proposal includes initiatives to promote student involvement in transportation research for women and minorities.If successful, this research will improve the efficiency of distribution systems for goods movement in a variety of applications. In addition, the results of this career program can be extended well beyond transportation. The main output of this research will be a set of methodological tools that can be used by others for different applications.