Distributed Decision Making in Combined Vehicle Routing and Break Scheduling

Abstract

After the analysis of the problem of combined vehicle routing and break scheduling from a centralized planning perspective, the problem is now enhanced by introducing decentralized decision structures. The overall planning problem comprises three interconnected partial problems: clustering of transportation requests, routing of vehicles and break scheduling. In practice, these tasks are usually not solved by a single decision maker, but are distributed over dispatchers and drivers (see Section 3.3). Dispatchers are responsible for the clustering of the requests, and in many cases also perform the routing. The task of break scheduling is always delegated to the drivers. Consequently, the problem is solved sequentially by two different decision makers and the planning situation is characterized by hierarchies in distributed decision making (DDM). When performing their planning tasks, the European social legislation forces dispatchers to provide that the drivers can comply with the legal rules (see Regulation, 2006, Article 10).