Dynamic vehicle routing for online B2C delivery

Electronic commerce (EC) is increasingly popular in today's businesses. The business-to-consumer EC environment has voluminous, unpredictable, and dynamically changing customer orders. A major part of the delivery system of this environment is the dynamic vehicle routing (DVR) system. This study investigates several algorithms suitable for solving the DVR problem in business-to-consumer (B2C) EC environment. It designs the solution process into three phases: initial-routes formation, inter-routes improvement, and intra-route improvement. A computer program is created to demonstrate a system simulating vehicle routing process under the online B2C environment. The simulated system collects data for system performance indexes such as simulation time, travel distance, delivery time, and delay time. The results show that when orders are placed through the Internet in an online B2C environment, the Nearest algorithms can be used to find satisfactory routes during the first phase of a DVR delivery system. The three-phase solution process is proven to be significantly better in travel distance and delivery time than the conventional single-phase solution process. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.