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Selective Backhauls in Truck Transport with Risk Mitigation: Large Belgian Retailer Case Study

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Abstract

In this work the problem of selective backhauls in the transport of fresh products is investigated for the case of a large Belgian grocery retailer. Explicit measures for estimating the risk involved in certain route - vendor backhauling combinations, which emerge from the uncertainties involved in over road transport and unforeseen waiting and loading/unloading times at the depot or stores, are constructed. Two different models are proposed: an integer linear program with chance constraints, and a stochastic linear program. The chance constraints in the first model are based on the intuition and experience of the people in planning and dispatching. In the second model, the balance between risk and potential profit is directly incorporated into the objective function. For this study, the largest of all transport companies working for the studied retailer is considered for reference and data. The stochastic linear program proved to be superior. Moreover, we demonstrate that, even if only considering a small part of the fleet, the potential profits and reduction in empty kilometers due to the selected backhauls are considerable.

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Notes

  1. Throughout this work, a route will denote a certain combination of stores that are visited in a specific order.

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Funding

This research is funded by the imec ICON project AI4FoodLogistics and is co-financed by imec and receives financial support from Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (project nr. HBC.2020.3097) and the UGent grant BOF/STA/202009/039.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IDLab, Ghent University - imec, Ghent, 9000, Belgium

    Kenneth Stoop, Mario Pickavet, Didier Colle & Pieter Audenaert

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  1. Kenneth Stoop
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  2. Mario Pickavet
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  3. Didier Colle
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  4. Pieter Audenaert
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Contributions

K. Stoop worked on the mathematical model, methodology, experiments, and the manuscript. M. Pickavet, D. Colle and P. Audenaert gave feedback on the used methods and formulations, and reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kenneth Stoop.

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Stoop, K., Pickavet, M., Colle, D. et al. Selective Backhauls in Truck Transport with Risk Mitigation: Large Belgian Retailer Case Study. Netw Spat Econ 24, 99–130 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11067-023-09611-1

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