Simulation of a whole week

[larsupb]

I wonder if it’s possible to simulate not only a planning day but a planning week. The Input consists of orders from the whole week. The Depot has closing times from let’s say 7pm up to 6am. The vehicle is to return to the Depot before closing time and may start at the next day at depot opening time. Every order or customer stop has a certain time window. For example if a customer needs to be delivered on Wednesday the time window could be starting at 24h x 2 plus 6h and close six hours later.

[hschneid]

Hmmm....

I don't get it really, what is the benefit to put the orders of complete week into one optimization run?

Why not making an optimization run for monday, one for tuesday and so on?

[larsupb]

For example, delivery dates could be flexible in terms of plus/minus a day or more. Than allocating the concrete day of delivery to a stop beforehand, massively decreases the potential of optimization. More generally speaking: route optimization could solve many disposition problems if it would be able to simulate a multiperiod context.

[hschneid]

Okay, I think I got the general issue.

I'm just thinking to solve it with multi-depot representation.

• Customers or loading tasks have a huge time window. Monday to Friday or so.
• Each depot would have opening/closing times for a certain weekday like Monday 8:00 to 17:00.
• So optimization would choose a depot, where a transport needs to be filled.

Disadvantage:

• It is easy to guess, that most of customers are transported at first day of period. There is no restriction to have an harmonized utilisation between the working days.

What do you think about this?