Collaborative Transportation in the Urban Distribution – TCDU

Shipper collaboration is achieved by the consolidation of transportation requests of multiple shippers into vehicle tours which are assigned to a carrier to perform. We have adopted a centralized approach based on a central model for this consolidation. On the other hand, for carrier collaboration, since carriers are competitors and do not want to reveal their business data to others, we have adopted a decentralized combinatorial auction approach for the exchange of transportation requests among them. A key problem for these two collaborations is the fair allocation of the cost or profit generated by collaboration among its participants. This problem is dealt with in the framework of cooperative games. In addition, collaborative planning of operations among shippers or carriers in urban distribution gives rise to new difficult variants of vehicle routing problems. We have developed exact or meta-heuristic algorithms to solve these problems efficiently. Finally, the AGILE Scrum method is used to integrate all partners in the design and implementation of the WEB platform.

For shipper collaboration, we have developed several meta-heuristics algorithms for the consolidation of transportation requests of multiple carriers in one or multiple periods. For carrier collaboration, we have proposed a new combinatorial auction mechanism and developed several efficient algorithms to solve bid generation and winner determination problems. In addition, a new mechanism for fair allocation of benefit or cost among these actors is designed based on mutual evaluation of the contribution of each participant. These research results are integrated into the web platform of this project.

Our research results are integrated into the project's web platform. It allows to present the concept and the general process of a collaboration among shippers or carriers. The platform in its current state will allow us to search for industrial partners. After improvement and finishing, it can serve as a decision support tool to facilitate la collaboration among these actors in urban distribution.

Our research results obtained in this project are valorized by 8 papers published in international journals, 1 paper published in a national journal, 8 papers submitted to international journals, and 24 presentations in international conferences with proceedings. These results cover models and optimization methods for several new variants of vehicle routing problem appeared in shipper collaboration or carrier collaboration, new combinatorial auction mechanisms for carrier collaboration, and new methods for fair allocation of profit or cost among shippers or carriers in the collaborative transportation.

In a big city like Paris or Shanghai, the daily flows of urban freight distribution are huge, especially in today’s e-commerce era. These goods flows together with the flows of private cars lead to traffic congestion, air pollution and enormous consumption of fossil energy. Optimizing logistics operations in an urban area is thus primordial for reducing air pollution and energy consumption, improving living conditions and assuring the sustainable development of a city.

Collaborative transportation has recently emerged as a very effective approach to further consolidate logistics flows beyond logistics platforms in a city. In this approach, several shippers or carriers collaborate with each other by pooling and sharing their transportation requests or by sharing their transportation means in order to reduce the repositions of empty vehicles and increase the fill rates of vehicles. By applying operations research, combinatorial auction and cooperative game theories, this project aims to develop models and optimization methods for collaborative transportation planning among shippers and carriers in the urban distribution. One novelty of the project is the study of the synergy between the consolidation of logistics flows through urban distribution centers and the consolidation of flows through the collaboration among shippers and carriers. Based on these models and methods, a prototype of web-based platform and a prototype of decision support tool will be developed to facilitate collaboration among shippers and carriers in a dynamic collaboration network. The results of the project can help these actors to reduce their logistics costs and contribute to the sustainable development of a city.