The planning and real-time adjustment of courier routing and scheduling under stochastic travel times and demands

This study develops a planning and a real-time adjustment model to plan courier routes and schedules in an urban area and to adjust the planned routes in actual operations. The stochastic travel time aspect of the problem has been addressed at both the planning stage and the operation stage. A heuristic is developed to efficiently solve the stochastic real-time adjustment model and a simulation-based evaluation method is also developed to compare the performance of the proposed models. The test results, related to an international express company’s operations, show the good performance of the proposed models.

► A stochastic planning model is developed for courier routes and schedules. ► A real-time model is developed to adjust the planned courier routes and schedules. ► A heuristic is developed to solve the stochastic real-time adjustment model. ► An evaluation method is developed to evaluate the performance of the models.