Mode Allocation, Scheduling and Routing for Inland Container Transportation

The aim of this presentation is to show the modelling of a particular container supply chain system, which concerns the inland transportation of containers between ports and inland terminals. In the Netherlands, the transport providers aim to perform an efficient service by favouring the use of barges and trains. At the same time, this target should not affect due dates requirements, as these hardly constrain the system and the decision making process. Therefore, the use of faster and more expensive modes, as trucks, is very often necessary.

The final model consists of an inland terminal, where the flows start, several quays of two main sea-terminals in the Port of Rotterdam and a set of inbound and outbound containers to be moved. A generic capacitated vehicle can deliver containers to the sea terminal quays and pick up others to bring to the hinterland. The decision making process is about the best allocation of containers to an available and heterogeneous fleet. The objective is to minimize the transportation costs while guaranteeing a high service level. The well-known Vehicle Routing Problem with Pickups and Deliveries is adapted to this practical case, by adding the specific time constraints and features of the system. Due to the NP-hardness of the problem we propose a Markov Chain Monte Carlo heuristic.  A case study and experimental results are discussed to show the behaviour of the models and their practical relevance for the real-world application.