Integrating internal and external container transportation under separation mode

Abstract

This paper formulates a real-life vehicle routing problem that internal and external container transportation are integrated under separation mode. Its objective is to minimize the total cost which including the fixed and variable transportation costs, and more important, we take the container overdue cost into consideration, which occurs when the container leaves for a long time and not return to the terminal on time. Then an improved genetic algorithm is proposed by conducting new coding and transform rules. The instance shows quantify the benefit of the integrated and separation transportation mode.