HW 8: Vehicle Routing

ISE 754: Logistics Engineering Spring 2018

Assigned: Mon, 9 Apr (Groups of 2) Due: 3p, Wed, 18 Apr

Please create a script in Matlab that performs the calculations needed to answer each of the
following questions, one cell for each part of each question. Please submit via Wolfware your
script, a diary output file, and any functions you created that are used by your script.
1. Acme, Inc. has a DC in Detroit, MI that supplies 45 customers each day with cases of
different products using tractor-trailer trucks. Given tomorrow’s demand, determine the
number of trucks required to supply the customers and the route of each truck. Customer
location, load density (in lbs/ft3), and weight (in lbs) of each load for each customer is in
the spreadsheet HW8data.xlsx. The spreadsheet includes the location of the depot
(customer 1). Each identical truck can (1) carry a maximum of 2,750 cu ft and 25 tons,
and (2) must complete its route within 10 total hours (between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m.),
including travel and unloading time. The vehicle can be loaded at the depot before 7 a.m.
and this loading time should not be included in the 10-hour total. Unloading at each
customer takes five minutes for positioning and three minutes per ton of the load. Each
vehicle travels at 70 mph on rural Interstate highways, 50 mph on urban Interstate
highways, 20 mph on non-Interstate urban roads, 45 mph on the remaining rural roads,
and 15 mph on the connector links. Your routes should use all of the roads that are in a
12% expanded rectangle that encloses the depot and customers.

2. Senior Transport Services (STS) is a nonprofit organization located in Boston that

provides dial-a-ride service to senior citizens (customers) in the Boston metropolitan
area. They would like to know how many vans they need to provide transport service and
have provided, as a representative dataset, all of the transport requests for a typical day.
All transport is round trip and consists of a mix of doctor visits and shopping trips. Each
request consists of a pickup at a customer’s residence and a drop off at their desired
destination, followed at a later time by a return trip back to their residence. The dataset is
in the Excel spreadsheet HW8data.xlsx. It contains the pickup/drop-off locations and
transport requests. Each request consists of indices for the pickup and drop-off locations
and their desired arrival and departure times. These desired times are the latest and
earliest times at which the customer can arrive to and depart from their destination,
respectively. STS’s goal is to ensure that no customer has to spend more than two hours
more than the time that they would have spent if they had been driven directly to their
destination (e.g., via a taxi) and had arrived exactly at their desired time. This total time
includes the time a customer spends on a van and the time spent waiting if they arrive
before their desired time. STS has the same goal for the return trip, where a customer
might spend time waiting beyond their desired departure time. Since STS does not
provide service for disabled customers, all loading and unloading takes approximately

1
 three minutes. Each day, all vans depart from and return to the STS garage which is at
location 1. After returning to the garage, a van can be used for another route. Assuming
each van can carry up to eight customers, what is the minimum number of vans required
to satisfy all of the requests in the dataset and still meet service goals?

3. Using Shipments 1, 3, 26, and 5 of the 30 shipments in shmtNC30.mat (see link on

schedule) with a transport rate for TL of $2 per mile and capacities of 2,750 cu ft and 25
tons, determine the transport charge for each shipment would be under equal charge,
equal savings, and exact and approximate Shapley allocation.