Journal article
Same-day delivery with heterogeneous fleets of drones and vehicles
Networks, Vol.72(4), pp.475-505
12/2018
DOI: 10.1002/net.21855
Abstract
In this paper, we analyze how drones can be combined with regular delivery vehicles to improve same-day delivery performance. To this end, we present a dynamic vehicle routing problem with heterogeneous fleets. Customers order goods over the course of the day. These goods are delivered either by a drone or by a regular transportation vehicle within a delivery deadline. Drones are faster, but have a limited capacity as well as require charging after use. In the same-day context, vehicle capacity is not a constraint, but vehicles are slow due to urban traffic. To decide whether an order is delivered by a drone or by a vehicle, we present a policy function approximation based on geographical districting. Our computational study reveals two major implications. First, geographical districting is highly effective increasing the expected number of same-day deliveries. Second, a combination of drone and vehicle fleets may significantly reduce the required delivery resources.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Same-day delivery with heterogeneous fleets of drones and vehicles
- Creators
- Marlin W. Ulmer - Technische Universität BraunschweigBarrett W. Thomas - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Networks, Vol.72(4), pp.475-505
- Publisher
- Wiley
- DOI
- 10.1002/net.21855
- ISSN
- 0028-3045
- eISSN
- 1097-0037
- Number of pages
- 31
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 12/2018
- Academic Unit
- Bus Admin College; Business Analytics
- Record Identifier
- 9984380558902771
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