A Time-space Network Model for Allocating the Container Storage Space in Express Depot

How to allocate the container storage space efficiently has become a key factor of revenue and competitiveness for express industry in recent years. In this work, a time-space network for allocating the container storage space in express depot is developed, which considers the continuity of container storage space allocation, the vehicle capacity and the uncertain demand for containers. The optimization problem is formulated as n interactional 0–1 integer programming models. The test results show the good performance of the proposed method. Sensitivity analysis is also performed to gain better insights into knowing how several important parameters affect the solutions.