Bi-objective optimization of drayage operations in the service area of intermodal terminals

• Operational planning of drayage operations around intermodal container terminals.
• Integration of allocation and routing decisions.
• For the first time a bi-objective approach: number of vehicles and distance.
• Three meta-heuristics based on deterministic annealing are proposed and compared.
• Hybrid deterministic annealing and tabu search algorithm provides the best results.

A full truckload vehicle routing problem in drayage operations around intermodal container terminals is studied. Loaded and empty containers need to be transported in a small geographical area. Either the origin or the destination of empty container transports is unknown in advance. The problem is formulated as an asymmetric multiple vehicle Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows (am-TSPTW). For the first time, this type of problem is considered from a bi-objective perspective. Three solution algorithms are proposed and compared with each other. Best results are obtained by a two-phase hybrid deterministic annealing and tabu search algorithm.