Gianluca Mastrolia DEEI - University of Trieste Via A. Valerio, Trieste - Italy 1 A B2B Application for a Freight Transportation Company AuthorGianluca Mastrolia Supervisorprof. Walter Ukovich Assistant supervisors prof. Raffaele Pesenti dr eng. Luca Coslovich

Gianluca Mastrolia 2 Outline The target of the project Definitions Hypothesis Customer behaviour reconstruction Real-time transportation orders assignment Summary and conclusions

Gianluca Mastrolia 3 Collaborations: –ORTS: Operations Research Group at University of Trieste –Ratios Ltd. – Logistic Laboratory The target of the project: to provide road transportation companies with an algorithm able to suggest in real-time new transportation orders that may be suitable inserted in their previously planned schedule

Gianluca Mastrolia 4 The Target of the Project /1 Freight transportation companies are highly interested to acquire new transportation orders for the already travelling not-full-loaded vehicles New technologies related to communications and information as well as the application of the results of Operations Research allow service companies to exploit new opportunities for the management of their fleets

Gianluca Mastrolia 5 The Target of the Project /2 Our decision support system for freight transportation companies is designed to acquire and manage new transportation orders To this end the following information is required: –The knowledge of transportation orders being executed by the companies –A list of new transportation orders (real-time orders)

Gianluca Mastrolia 6 Definitions From the service company point of view: Customer: freight transportation company Orders: requests for freight transportation Customer Orders Service company (Ratios)

Gianluca Mastrolia 7.

8 Hypotheses /1 One vehicles-depot for every customer –Open 24 hours a day –The vehicles depart from and arrive to it Medium-long routes (400 km on the average) To execute an order means: –To pick up the goods at the pick up location –To delivery the goods at the delivery location –The two events shall occur within a specified time window

Gianluca Mastrolia 9 Hypotheses /2 Capacity constraints: –The vehicles are homogeneous (i.e. they have the same capacity) –Only the weight is considered (the volumes are not) Other time constraints: –The vehicle is allowed to circulate not more than X hours a day –After Y hours of non-stop ride, the vehicle has to stop for Z minutes –There are periods in which the circulation is not allowed (e.g. Sundays)

Gianluca Mastrolia 10 Customers Behaviour Reconstruction /1 At first the DSS must reconstruct the routing and scheduling of every customer from the knowledge of the orders already acquired Dep

Gianluca Mastrolia 11 Customers Behaviour Reconstruction /2 The DSS matches a permissible routing of the vehicles for every customer … … following a constructive procedure Dep 5 5

Gianluca Mastrolia 12 Real-Time Transportation Orders Assignment New orders become part of the routing of each customer one at a time in the most economically favourable position Only the orders that cause an increase of the cost function smaller than a fixed threshold will be suggested to the customers (for example via )

Gianluca Mastrolia 13 Summary and Conclusions We have developed a DSS which selects a subset of incoming real-time transportation orders which are likely to be useful for the customer transportation companies considered, and suggests them via