Proposal of a multi-agent model for the sustainable truck scheduling and containers grouping problem in a Road-Rail physical internet hub

Abstract

Physical Internet (PI) was introduced as a global standardised and interconnected logistics system based on PI-nodes, PI-movers and PI-containers as a mean toward global logistics sustainability. One important issue regarding PI-nodes concerns the planning and scheduling of operations and the management of PI-containers, both in a deterministic and a perturbed environment. This research considers the Road-Rail PI-hub sustainable truck scheduling and PI-containers grouping problem. In our research we consider the weighted sum of the number of used wagons, the internal distance travelled by PI-containers from PI-docks to wagons as well as the trucks’ tardiness, which translate the search for sustainable logistics. In this paper, an effective and reactive multi-agent system based model (MAS) is developed for the resolution of the trucks scheduling and PI-containers grouping. To ensure the efficiency of the MAS and improve the quality of each of its solutions, three concurrent hybrid meta-heuristics are embedded within three parallel scheduling agents. Then, a mixed integer linear programming model (MILP) is proposed to evaluate the performance of the MAS. Finally, the MAS is also evaluated under internal perturbations. The obtained results show the ability of the MAS to provide alternative sustainable solutions by rescheduling trucks in case of disruptions.