A Two-Echelon Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem With Sharing Satellite Resources

Collaboration vehicle routing has garnered increasing attention recently because it can help enterprises reduce costs by sharing resources. This paper addresses a novel two-echelon capacitated vehicle routing problem with sharing satellite resources (2E-CVRPSSR), which arises with the development of e-commerce and the Sharing economy in city logistics. In this problem, goods are delivered within a two-echelon routing network, where satellites are used to consolidate and transfer goods between first- and second-echelon routing. Moreover, the second-echelon vehicles can depart from and return to different satellites. A mixed integer linear programming model is first presented, and an adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm with several new search operators and strategies is proposed to solve this problem. The numerical results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively solve the 2E-CVRPSSR. Moreover, an average transportation cost savings of 6.29% can be obtained by sharing satellite resources. In addition, geographic analysis indicates that the layout of the depot, satellites, and customers largely impacts the economic advantages of sharing satellite resources. Specifically, the highest economic benefits are achieved when the satellites are distributed from nearest to farthest from the depot, with customers located between nearby and distant satellites and with satellites of large enough capacity close to the depot.