Composite Variable Formulations for Express Shipment Service Network Design

Details

• Creators:
  Armacost, Andrew P. ; Barnhart, Cynthia ; Ware, Keith A.
• Corporate Creators:
  United States Air Force Academy ; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Air transportation
  • Costs
  • Decision making
  • Flow
  • Linear programming
  • Networks
  • Routing
  • Savings
  • Air transportation
  • Aircraft
  More +
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• ISSN:
  1526-5447
• Corporate Publisher:
  United States. Air Force Academy
• Abstract:
  In this paper we describe a new approach to solving the express shipment service network design problem. Conventional polyhedral methods for network design and network loading problems do not consistently solve instances of the planning problem we consider. Under a restricted version of the problem, we transform conventional formulations to a new formulation using what we term composite variables. By removing flow decisions as explicit decisions, this extended formulation is cast purely in terms of the design elements. We establish that its linear programming relaxation gives stronger lower bounds than conventional approaches. We apply this composite variable formulation approach to the UPS Next Day Air delivery network and demonstrate potential annual cost savings in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/40662/dot_40662_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 210.72 KB]
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:8611ed7030edf48b9d53a3f3177b54e7a0fd71d79efd43de0be859f81ed80ff3