This paper considers a dynamic and stochastic routing problem in which information about customer locations and probabilistic information about future service requests are used to maximize the expected number of customers served by a single uncapacitated vehicle. The problem is modeled as a Markov decision process, and analytical results on the structure of the optimal policy are derived. For the case of a single dynamic customer, we completely characterize the optimal policy. Using the analytical results, we propose a real-time heuristic and demonstrate its effectiveness compared with a series of other intuitively appealing heuristics. We also use computational tests to determine the heuristic value of knowing both customer locations and probabilistic information about future service requests. © 2007 INFORMS.
CITATION STYLE
Thomas, B. W. (2007). Waiting strategies for anticipating service requests from known customer locations. Transportation Science, 41(3), 319–331. https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.1060.0183
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