Stochastic two-echelon vehicle routing problem with time windows: city logistics case study

The two-echelon capacitated vehicle routing problem (2E-CVRP) is a popular modelling approach used for solving urban logistics problems. Its aim is to handle freight distribution starting at a depot that supplies satellites or consolidation centres, and then to customers. Inspired by a case study, this work studies a 2E-CVRP variant with heterogeneous fleet of vehicles between echelons and limited loading capacity and time windows. The objective is the minimisation of the travel time. To deal with the computational complexity of the problem, a decomposition algorithm based on mixed integer linear programming (MILP) to solve the deterministic version is proposed. Also, a simheuristic is designed to solve its stochastic version. Experiments are carried out using real data of a case study in the city of Bogota, Colombia. Results show the impact of different freight delivery scenarios, providing insights for efficient decision-making.