Research On Vehicle Route Problem Considering Collapsible Containers Being Recycled

In the context of the "One Belt and One Road",society has put forward higher requirements in the field of goods circulation,especially in terms of transportation efficiency and effectiveness.According to the survey,there are two major problems in the regional distribution of large goods such as home appliances and household goods(such as flat-screen TVs,air conditioners and refrigerators et al.): the loading and unloading efficiency and cargo safety.In order to solve the above-mentioned pain points,the enterprise attempts to deliver goods by swap-containers,that is,to complete the transportation of bulky goods through foldable containers.When adopting turnover and collapsible container,its subsequent container recycling will face new problems.This paper was developed in the context of such research.Considering the foldable characteristics of containers based on the VRP with simultaneous pickups and deliveries.And constructing the delivery priority strategy and the pickup priority strategy model from the two perspectives of the initial load and the return load of the vehicle.The main research contents are as follows.Firstly,based on the practical problems in the bulky cargoes transportation,the swap-containers business was proposed.It also proposes application modes for reciprocating swap-containers at both ends and circulating swap-containers transportation,as well as application scenarios such as front-end cargo collection,trunk transportation and site operation.According to the characteristics of the research problem,the pick up and delivery strategy and container folding characteristics are analyzed.The paper discusses the two loading and unloading strategies based on the one-dimensional and the two-dimensional respectively,that is empty containers placing in the rear of the truck and in the front of the truck.And counting the number of extra loading and unloading operations.Secondly,Regarding the problem how to recycle foldable containers,we put forward delivery priority strategy and pickup priority strategy,in order to meet the needs of customers and container recycling respectively.According to the two pickup and delivery strategies,we construct a mathematical model considering the recycling of the foldable container.The objective function is to minimize the cost of containers configuration,containers folding and unfolding costs,and additional loading and unloading operation costs due to simultaneous delivery and delivery etc.And satisfy the constraints of pickup priority or delivery priority,folding ratio constraints,etc.The greedy algorithm is used to construct the initial solution and tabu search algorithm optimize the solution for the model.Actually investigating a home appliance transportation company,substituting the parameter data to solve the delivery priority strategy and the pickup priority strategy model respectively,and taking the delivery priority strategy as an example,compare the three options of the container's folding ratio of 1/8,1/4 and 1,respectively,and discussing the impact of container's folding ratio on the vehicle route problem.Finally,main research conclusions:(1)Conclusion of container loading and unloading strategy research.The empty containers placing in the rear of the truck strategy is more suitable for the case the demand for empty containers is less than the demand for heavy containers.Similarly,the empty containers placing in the front of the truck strategy is more suitable for the case where the demand for heavy containers is less than the demand for empty containers.(2)Conclusion of the pickup and delivery strategy research.The delivery priority strategy can make more use of the vehicle loading space than the pickup priority strategy When the loading space required for the goods to be delivered is greater than the loading space required for the goods to be picked up,thereby reducing transportation costs and total mileage of vehicle transportation.Similarly,The pickup priority strategy is better than the delivery priority strategy When the loading space required for the goods to be picked up is larger than the loading space required for the goods to be delivered.There are 38 figures,11 tables and 83 references in the paper.