Vehicle Routing for the Last-Mile Logistics Problem

TL;DR

This paper presents a simulated annealing-based method to optimize vehicle routes in last-mile logistics, reducing energy consumption and operational costs for a single depot with homogeneous delivery vehicles.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of simulated annealing to the vehicle routing problem focused on minimizing energy and costs in last-mile delivery.

Findings

Effective route optimization demonstrated through simulation

Significant reduction in operational costs achieved

Approach applicable to real-world logistics scenarios

Abstract

Energy consumption is the major contributor associated with large and growing transportation cost in logistics. Optimal vehicle routing approaches can provide solutions to reduce their operating costs and address implications on energy. This paper outlines a solution to the single-depot capacitated vehicle routing problem with the objective of minimizing daily operation cost with a homogeneous fleet of delivery vehicles. The problem is solved using Simulated Annealing, to provide optimal routes for the vehicles traveling between the depot and destinations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach is effective to recommend an optimal route and reduce operation cost. Supplementary information and video of our proposed approach can be found at: https://sites.google.com/view/ud-ids-lab/last-mile