Research on express delivery vehicle route planning method for stochastic customer demand

Express delivery vehicle route optimization with simultaneous stochastic pick up demands is significantly essential to improve response speed, and to decrease delivery cost. To achieve it, this paper proposes an express delivery vehicle route planning method. The optimization model is build and the methodology is discussed in detail. Ant Colony Algorithm has been exploited to derive the optimal solution. The proposed model is solved in Simulink simulation environment. The results show this method can effectively solve the complex decision problem of selecting the best vehicle from a number of feasible pickup vehicles. According to the dynamic situation, the vehicle routing path can be update and optimize in time. This method can significantly shorten the delivery and pick-up time, greatly improve the customer's dynamic order response speed, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce logistics costs.