A Modified Ant Algorithm Integrates Real-Life Road Constraints in Vehicle Routing Under Uncertain Environments: a Case Study of E-Commerce Courier Companies in India.

EasyChair Preprint 2588

Abstract

The supply chain network that is followed by the online retailer companies or the stores that offer e-commerce facilities, is so designed that it primarily caters to successfully meeting the requirements of the customers. The recent advancements in technology and rising demand indicates the need for a complex decision support framework which has directed the e-Commerce and third-party logistics industries to an extremely competitive environment. This paper focuses on such vehicle routing problems which are basically region-based and delivers mostly any types of food products. There are products in the delivery vehicle which has less shelf life than others and those products have to be delivered within their allocated time to avoid deterioration. Most of the delays in deliveries have been observed due to the ambiguous requests received from the customers. These dynamic requests may arrive at any point in time and it is irrespective of the vehicle position, whether it is at the warehouse or on its way. This uncertainty causes an interruption in the existing vehicle tour which leads to an upsurge in greenhouse emissions. The Ant System algorithm has been reformed according to specific constraints like the size of the roads and traffic congestion factors to optimize the vehicle route. The objective of this study is to minimize the emission caused by the movement of vehicles in transportation while satisfying public needs and demand.

Keyphrases: Ant System, Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem, Vehicle Routing Problem, e-commerce

@booklet{EasyChair:2588,
  author    = {Krishnendu Mondal and Sandeep Mondal},
  title     = {A Modified Ant Algorithm Integrates Real-Life Road Constraints in Vehicle Routing Under Uncertain Environments: a Case Study of E-Commerce Courier Companies in India.},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 2588},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2020}}