Research On Service Network Design For China Railway Express Parcel Transportation

With the rapid growth of express shipment delivery industry, carriers have begun to offer high quality, reliable services to capture a large share of the delivery market. While the quality of express services depends on the ability that carriers design, control, organize and coordinate their service networks. With these changes, the service network design problem (SNDP) that designates the set of main tactical issues and decisions relevant of operating planning for carriers becomes more important. The objective of designing transportation service network is to satisfy all customer demand with an acceptable level of service at minimum cost. Since railway parcel transportation plays an important role in the China express small shipment delivery market, and tactical operating planning for railway parcel transportation is made manually, it is necessary and important to study the theory and method of service network design for railway express parcel transport.In this research, both literature and basic theory related to network design problem and service network design problem are overviewed. There are two parcel transportation products or service types (i.e. special train parcel transport and general parcel transport) offered in the China railway parcel transportation system. Then based on the characteristics of transportation organization mode of these service products, this research studies extensively the SNDP of special train parcel transport and general parcel transport by mathematical optimization approaches. The research consists of the following sections.(1) As network design problem (NDP) provides the important groundwork for studying service network design problem, the thesis summarizes the related theory and method of network design problem. This research presents the general model of NDP, discusses the approaches to solve linear and nonlinear NDP, and analyze the common solution procedure for the large-scale network design problem. The models and algorithms of special cases of NDP involved in the remainder of this research are analyzed in detail.(2) Service network design with application to railway parcel transportation is a special case of well-studied SNDP. This research analyzed the theory and method of service network design problem systematically. By comparing SNDP with NDP, the research presents the general model of SNDP. As a rule, SNDP can be divided into two sorts by the traits of the model. And the thesis places emphasis on static frequency and dynamic models of SNDP, since they provide the significant foundation for studying two railway parcel transportation products respectively.(3) Railway express parcel transport system is the base for studying SNDP of railway...