Dynamic multi-stage failure-specific cooperative recourse strategy for logistics with simultaneous pickup and delivery

With the development of distribution logistics, the vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pickup and delivery (VRPSPD) has garnered attention in recent years due to its higher capacity-usage rate and transportation efficiency. This study proposes a novel dynamic multi-stage failure-specific cooperative (DMS-FSC) recourse strategy for solving the route failure which occurs in the VRPSPD. In the case of simultaneous transportation, the proposed DMS-FSC strategy allows a pair of cooperative vehicles to revisit each other’s customers with unmet demands by dividing the whole transportation route into multiple stages. An extended genetic algorithm with a new multi-stage paired vectors representation scheme is offered to more effectively deal with the proposed DMS-FSC strategy. It explores a more ideal a priori transportation plan for the VRPSPD by incorporating an acceptance criterion based on simulated annealing. Two sets of cases with middle and corner located depots are used to verify the proposed algorithm’s effectiveness in solving the presented problem. Furthermore, a comparison between the DMS-FSC strategy and the baseline strategy, which involves no cooperation, is also made to evaluate the cost savings generated from the proposed DMS-FSC strategy.