Dynamic fleet management under real-time information

Logistics management has been one of the most important parts in the supply chain management. More and more distribution centers (DC) have been established to provide the flexibility of sales and supply. Major daily operation issues in distribution centers are routes and schedules of trucks. The dynamic vehicle routing problems (DVRP) is an extension of vehicle routing problems (VRP) in order to consider possible variations of travel times in the network. In this research, a two-stage framework for solving dynamic vehicle routing problem is proposed. In the first stage, a well known approach, the sweep method, is conducted in vehicle assignment. In the second stage, a Tabu search algorithm is implemented to improve routes under real-time information. The heuristic approach is then applied in an evaluation framework is which assigning and routing operations could be simulated in a realistic traffic environment. The simulation-assignment model, DynaTAIWAN is applied to evaluate assigning and routing strategies in a traffic network. Numerical experiments are conducted in a Taichung City.