INTER-CITY SMALL-LOT LOGISTICS NETWORK MODEL CONSIDERING DEPARTURE AND ARRIVAL TIMES

Abstract

With the increasing popularity of time-specified services in the parcel delivery industry, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the impact of time constraints on small-lot logistics. This study focuses on the inter-city transportation part of small-lot logistics and proposes an optimization model that introduces departure and arrival time constraints into the hub network design problem (HNDP), which determines the network geometry. The results show that the model can represent the phenomena of detouring and consolidation on the network as expected, and that a trade-off relationship appears between the strength of the time constraint and the cost of the network.