選擇以自有車輛運送或委託貨運公司服務之啟發式演算法

A Heuristic Algorithm for the Truckload Versus Less-than-truckload Problem

運銷管理者所面臨的決策問題很多，如何選擇一合適的運輸方式或業者運送貨物對運銷管理而言，是一很重要的決策，因為運輸成本在運銷各項成本中所佔之比例最高。 基本上有兩種運輸方式可供業者選擇，一種是以自有車隊運送，另者是委託貨運公司運送。以自有車隊運送，運銷管理者需要決定的是合併那些運送在同一車和規劃運送路線。委託貨運公司運送，貨運公司負責規劃每次從運送地至目的地的路線，運銷管理者只需將貨物交與給他們即可。市場上常見的新竹貨運、與大榮貨運屬於後者。 本研究以單一配送中心為研究對象，考慮不同車種與選擇貨運公司服務的情形下之車輛途程問題，主要的研究目的為發展一啟發式演算法，協助運銷管理者解決問題。經測試比較後顯示啟發式演算法之效率與準確度均十分良好。

The delivery of goods from a warehouse to local customers is an important and practical problem of a logistics manager. In reality, we are facing the fluctuation of demand. When the total demand is greater than the whole capacity of owned trucks, the logistics managers may consider using an outsider carrier.
In this paper, we address the problem of routing a fixed number of trucks with limited capacity from a central warehouse to customers with known demand. The objective of this paper is developing a heuristic algorithm to route the private trucks and to make a selection of less-than-truckload carriers by minimizing a total cost function. Both the mathematical model and the heuristic algorithm are developed. Finally, some computational results and suggestions for future research are presented.