Vehicle Scheduling Problem Research Proposal-Tutorsindia

Research Proposal
Vehicle scheduling problem preferably its application in Electric /alternatives

fuel city bus fleets
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1
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3
2.0 Background of the study ......................................................................................................................... 3
3.0 Previous Work ........................................................................................................................................ 5
4.0. Problem Description .............................................................................................................................. 8
5.0. Aim and Research Objectives ................................................................................................................ 9
6.0. Expected outcome .................................................................................................................................. 9
7.0 Research Plan ........................................................................................................................................ 10
References ................................................................................................................................................... 11
2
1.0 Introduction
Various reports have been produced estimating the global damage cost of carbon
emissions (Clarkson & Deyes, 2002; AEA Technology Environment, 2005; SEI, 1999; Stern,
2006). Therefore, it is very important to find the necessary ways for reducing the carbon-di-oxide
in road freight transport. An operational issue facing the transport sector will be decisions
relating to the routing and vehicular scheduling, and the choice of vehicle type for given
deliveries, particularly in relation to the potential added cost of CO2 emissions. Thus, there is a
need for better operational routing models that would identify the types of vehicles to purchase
and how to schedule them, and eventually that would lead to maximize profit. Thus, the present
study aims to solve a vehicle routing problem from the perspective of reduction of emission and
fuel consumption.
2.0 Background of the study
Vehicle scheduling problem has been extensively studied for over 50 years now (Dantzig
& Ramser, 1959). Figure 1 explains about the relationship of a public transport companys four
operational planning problems found in the traditional planning process.
Figure 1: Traditional Planning Process
Line frequencies
Time tabling
Vehicle scheduling
Crew scheduling
Collective
agreements and
labour rules Crew rostering
3
Source: Adopted from Huisman, Freling & Wagelmans, 2004
Currently, models for Vehicle Scheduling Problems (VSP) are being used extensively for
the needs of operational planning in public transportation. Bus transport has probably benefitted
the most by the abundance of solution approaches created to optimize real-life problems of
assigning busses to timetabled trips. In the conventional VSP, specifically, a set of timetabled
trips with start/end locations, fixed travel times are given. The purpose of this method is to assign
the vehicles to trips, in order to minimize the overall costs, each trip is covered once and each
vehicle covers a feasible sequence of trips. Variations of the problem mainly stem from the focus
on the two types of costs fixed (capital costs, maintenance) and operational (fuel and labour).
Usually vehicle initial investments have a priority over the operational costs minimization. The
paper of (Bunte & Kliewer, 2009) provides a concise survey of the VSP, its most popular cases
and corresponding solution methodologies.
With recent years of growing environmental concerns and government attempts on

reducing vehicle emissions, a good opportunity for using the tools of Operations Research arises.
Taking in consideration the fact that most developed countries have decided on placing quotas,
the value of emissions or actually their reduction has been monetized. This in return creates a
good incentive for trading and respectively minimization of toxic pollutants. Hence, in order to
stay competitive in this new environment, it will be beneficial for urban transport companies to
reconsider their scheduling capabilities and fleet so that costs and emissions are maintained at
optimal ratio. This can be achieved by using a vehicle scheduling model that with a combination
of different conventional, alternative fuel, hybrid or electric vehicles will cover a set of
timetabled trips at the lowest possible cost and emissions.
In short, the firm can optimize its decision on what types of vehicles to purchase and how
to schedule them, in order to maximize profit. As an indirect result, the environment will also
benefit from reduced pollution in cities. Little research has been done in that specific area of
interest. To my knowledge, only one study (Jing-Quan Li, 2009) developed a bus scheduling
model that aims at minimizing the environmental impact of a bus company. The present study
4
will attempt to develop a VSP with the extension of VTG (Vehicle Type Groups) that will use a
time-space network to avoid an explosive increase of the model size due to the growing
timetable of transport companies.
3.0 Previous Work
Previous studies on sustainability from transport developed a vehicle replacement

optimization focusing on preventive maintenance and replacement (Khalil, 2000), time
dependent vehicle routing context using a tabu search procedure Jabali & Woensel, 2012), model
that drivers chooses emission minimizing routes (Sugawara & Niemeier, 2002; Taniguchi et al.,
2001), identification of shortest path (Scott et al., 2010) and problem to account pollution routing
problem (Bektas & Laporte, 2011). Other studies on problems of vehicle scheduling focused on
solutions to optimization problems. Studies by Rardin and Uzsoy (2001) and Lee and Jung
(1989) developed heuristics optimizations while the recent study by Babu, Jerald, Haq and
Luxmi (2010) addressed through meta-heuristic differential evolution (DE) algorithm. There is a
vast amount of academic literature covering VSP some solutions or models approaches (Daduna
& Paixao, 1995; Mesquita & Paixao, 1999; Mesquita & Paixao, 1999; Bodin & Golden, 1981;
Bodin & Golden, 1983; Wren, 2003), and nearly all of them focus on trying to improve the type
of heuristic used to produce an optimum result. For instance the study Sexton (1979) and Sexton
and Bodin (1985a, 1985b) developed single vehicle DARP to solved a routing problem through
an insertion heuristics (Cordeau & Laporte, (2003). Similarly, Yan (1988) proposed a heuristic
method for truck scheduling while Ferland and Fortin (1989) investigated problem with sliding
time windows using heuristic problem. This is the first method to address the time window
problem. Moreover, several studies have also addressed the problem from the single-depot
vehicle type (SDVSP). Daduna and Paixao (1995), Desrsiers et al., (1995) have listed several
algorithms and applications to solve SDVSP such as linear assignment problem, a transportation
problem, a minimum co (Freling et al., 2001) st flow problem, and a matching problem and a
quasi experimental (Freling et al., 2001). In addition, vehicle scheduling problem was addressed
5
using network flow (Ahuja & Magnanti., 1993), Time constraint routing and scheduling
(Desrsiers et al., 1995), Linear network optimization (Bertsekas, 1991), Dual coordinated step
method to MDVSP (Eckstein, 1988), a colum generation approach (Ribeiro & Soumis, 1994), a
forward or reverse action alogorithms (Castanon, 1993), Hungarian Assignment Algorithm
(Volgenante, 1996), Systemtaic changes in the time table ( Hasselstrom, 1980), Quasi
Assignment problem (Zhou, 1990), Bus scheduling with a fixed number of vehicles, time
constraint and routing (Dumas et al., 1995) and integrated approach (Boender et al., 1995),
Matching (Gerards, 1995), Type vehicle (Scott, 1986)
Solomon et al., (1988) set the standard with six test problems applied to a heuristic that
produced a set of routes for 100 customers with identical Euclidian times and distances.
Subsequent academic research has tended to use these same Solomon test problems and to
benchmark the results produced against Solomons results. A number of variants to the VRP
heuristics have been developed to cope with operational requirements such as limitations on the
capacity of a vehicle (CVRP), multi-depot Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problem with Time
Window (VRSPTW), with backhauls (VRPB), Open Vehicle Routing Problem with Pickup and
Delivery (VRSPPSD), pickup and delivery the time window have been extensively studied. For
instance, recently Liu (2013) addressed the problem with multi-distribution centre vehicle
routing problem (Liu, 2013) with time window using artificial bee colony algorithm based
genetic algorithm. The new algorithm not only lowered transportation costs and also increased
economic efficiency.
Most of the previous work focused on minimizing the number of vehicles, and some on
total waiting time but not many on reduction of emission. The study by Apaydin and Gonullu
(2008) developed a VRSP model for waste collection, particularly in this study author focused to
optimize solid waste collection. However, Kuo focused on calculation of total fuel consumption
for the TDVRP using simulated annealing (SA) algorithm (Kuo, 2010). Load and Speed was
accounted by Bektas and Laporte to address the issue of emission (Bektas & Laporte, 2011).
Further, Suzuki (2011), Wygonik and Goodchild (Erdoan & Miller-Hooks, 2012) developed for
pick-up and delivery system and Erdogan and Hook focused to minimize total distance travel
6
(13). The main drawback with these classical techniques is that they often find suboptimal
solutions by getting trapped in local minima. To overcome this problem, academic approaches
have focussed on meta-heuristic techniques such as tabu search, simulated annealing and genetic
algorithms, and some of these have started to appear in commercial packages (Slater, 2006).
These metaheuristic techniques use high level algorithmic approaches to search for feasible
solutions. Moreover, the traditional vehicle scheduling problem attempts to minimize capital and
operating costs but failed to focus on pollutants which have become an increasingly important.
In order to address this issue, recent study by Jing-Quan Li (2009) proposed an approach
which is based on time space network for reducing the underlying network CPLEXs, number of
arcs to solve the problem. The findings of the study indicated that a significant reduction in the
bus emission can be achieved if the bus-scheduling is proper in turn the carbon footprint. In
addition several studies conducted in the field of VSP focused routing and scheduling problems
in general and used several models or solution approaches to solve the problem. For instance, for
single depot case models, proposed minimal decomposition model to solve SD-VSP. The idea
was based on the Dilworth Theorem but main drawback is it only solved the smallest fleet size
and no upper limit for the fleet size despite the operational costs. However, this drawback is
fixed by the Assignment model where it fixes both an arrival and a departure node and used in
multiple depot case. Again, this model could not predict a fixed or maximal number of vehicles.
To overcome these limitations, the transportation model (Quasi Assignment model) was
developed where only arcs with i (alpha) j are inserted in addition with two depot nodes.
However, the limitation is it focuses only on short deadhead arcs. A network flow model (4) for
tanker scheduling was proposed where a trip connected two notes which represented each trips.
In multiple depot case for scheduling problems of vehicles from different locations, several
models have been developed such as Single commodity, Multi-commodity and Set partitioning
models. Since, the present study focused on multi-commodity formulation, will restrict our
discussion only to time s-pace networks which has a different underlying network structure.
This avoids the disadvantage of explicit consideration of whatever possible connections
involving compatible trips.
7
Forbes et al. (1994) and Lbel (1998) consider such an extension within a connection-
based1 multi-commodity approach and the application within a time-space network was done in
(Kliewer, Melloul, & Suhl, 2006). As this will make the problem NP-hard (Lenstra & Kan,
1981), a station-based time-space network can be used, which will reduce dramatically the
number of arcs in the network and will allow a solution to optimality even for large instances
using CPLEX, as applied by (Kliewer, Melloul, & Suhl, 2006). A key component in the
formulation of the model will be the constraint on emissions, which can be relaxed in an elastic
formulation whereby it is transformed to a penalty cost that involves the current market price of
emissions. In this way, the company will be able to make the decision between allowing more
emissions and buying quotas or cutting them and selling instead. The result should be an optimal
fleet composed of different buses that are covering the schedule at lowest possible cost/emissions
ratio to maximize profits.
Given the above literature, yet, to our knowledge, the explicit integration of vehicle type
group using time-space network and algorithms has not been investigated in depth so far except
the previous study. As previous studies have focused fixed, speed, load, road gradient and
acceleration rate with different algorithms. In this study, the focus is to study the efficiency of
vehicle routing through VGT and performance of this grouping will be addressed through total
travel distance, total travel time, total fuel consumption, total waiting time and number of vehicle
utilized per trip. The model used in this paper is based on a time-space network based modelling
approach
4.0. Problem Description
So far, there are no studies available about the vehicle scheduling problem to the best of
our knowledge from sustainability point of view except the study by Jing-Quan Li (2009). Given,
this gap and the gaps highlighted previously, the goal of this research is to develop a new
mathematical model for the VRP with the extension of VTG, based on the Time space network.
8
The mathematical model proposed is tested in a set of XX instances which come from the public
transportation system in XXX.
5.0. Aim and Research Objectives
1. To develop a new mathematical model for the VSP with the extension of Vehicle Type
group (VTG) using a time-space network
2. To verify the effectiveness in terms of its performance and stability of the algorithm
3. To compare the adaptability of algorithms with previously developed algorithms
6.0. Expected outcome
While various minimisation principles are used the emission value and route value gets
change and this can be measured with the help of above findings. This study acts as a
contribution from the academic end where the model is developed in the form of speed flow
method by bridging two components, one from transportation planning in the form of driving
cycles and another from vehicle emission component in the form of fuel consumption formulae
by executing the VRP model, that is found in the field of logistics. Moreover in the additional
academic contribution the way speed has been enhanced and it is constituted within the model of
VRP. Government and operators can utilise practical contribution in current argument on CO2
emissions.
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7.0 Research Plan
Things to do Time Duration (Per week)
0 1 1 1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Draft proposal
submission
Final proposal
Literature Review
Ethical committee
approval for conducting
research
Collection Of Data
Analysis of Data
Submission of Report
for comments 1st revision
Submission of Report
for comments 2nd revision
Final Report
Presentation of Thesis
10
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11
Castanon, D. (1993) Reverse Auction Algorithms for Assignment Problems, Algorithms for
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Research Proposal

Vehicle scheduling problem preferably its application in Electric /alternatives

2.0 Background of the study

Figure 1: Traditional Planning Process

With recent years of growing environmental concerns and government attempts on

3.0 Previous Work

Previous studies on sustainability from transport developed a vehicle replacement

4.0. Problem Description

5.0. Aim and Research Objectives

6.0. Expected outcome

Things to do Time Duration (Per week)

Bektas, T. and Laporte, G. (2011) The pollution-routing problem, Transportation Research

Bunte, S. and Kliewer, N. (2009) An overview on vehicle scheduling models, Public

Erdoan, S. and Miller-Hooks, E. (2012) A green vehicle routing problem, Transportation

Hasselstrom, B. (1980) Improved vehicle scheduling in public transport through systematic

Jing-Quan Li, K. L. (2009) Sustainability provisions in the bus-scheduling problem,

Rardin, R. L. and Uzsoy, R. (2001) Experimental evaluation of heuristic optimization

Slater, T. (2006) The eviction of critical perspectives from gentrification research,

Volgenant, A. (1996) Linear and semi-assignment problems: a core oriented approach,

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