| Article ID: | iaor200970764 |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Volume: | 22 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Start Page Number: | 88 |
| End Page Number: | 104 |
| Publication Date: | Jul 2009 |
| Journal: | OR Insight |
| Authors: | Salhi Said, Currie Robert H |
| Keywords: | transportation: general, heuristics: tabu search, location, distribution, construction & architecture |
An application of real-time changes in scheduling deliveries of road-making materials is conducted based on an implementation of a tabu search heuristic. This distribution problem deals with heterogeneous products and vehicles where the assignment of pickup points to requests needs also to be made. The problem is investigated as a full-load pickup and delivery problem with time windows. Online as well as offline experiments based on real data from a construction company in the United Kingdom are reported and discussed. Various practical issues that arise in this real-time logistical problem are also discussed and analysed. Interesting and encouraging results are reported.