The loader problem: formulation, complexity and algorithms

The loader problem: formulation, complexity and algorithms

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Article ID: iaor20103442
Volume: 61
Issue: 5
Start Page Number: 840
End Page Number: 848
Publication Date: May 2010
Journal: Journal of the Operational Research Society
Authors: , , , ,
Keywords: personnel & manpower planning
Abstract:

In this paper we consider a new transportation model, called the loader problem, which is frequently encountered by third-party logistics service providers in practice. It is a tactical staff-planning problem with the objective of minimizing the total labour cost of staffing a sufficient number of loaders on a given fleet of trucks that serve a given set of customer sites. We formulate the problem as an integer program and show that it is strongly NP-hard. We then consider two special cases of the loader problem that occur in certain practical situations, and propose polynomial and pseudo-polynomial time algorithms for solving these cases. We also propose a linear programming relaxation-based random rounding algorithm for the general problem and report the computational results of the algorithm.

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