Dimension reduction for a multi-resource general assignment problem by decomposable costs for a vehicle compound

Abstract

In the finished vehicle logistics on vehicle compounds, the handling requires a high quote of personnel requirement, i.e. workers, who transfer the vehicles from or to traffic carriers. For an efficient assignment of orders to workers and shuttles, which transfer the workers across the terminal, this problem can be formulated as a (3D-)multi-resource general assignment problem to obtain a time-minimal solution of workers to orders and an optional shuttle usage. However, as this optimisation problem faces the curse of dimensionality with increasing numbers of workers, shuttles and orders, the assignment problem is decomposed into several 2D-sub-problems to ensure a faster execution and hence, allow for larger problem sizes. We describe the approach to split up the problem, develop the mathematical formulation, and present the simulations for both approaches and compare their results.