The parcel hub scheduling problem with limited conveyor capacity and controllable unloading speeds
研究邮政枢纽中卡车调度问题，通过引入可控卸货速度来优化传送带等瓶颈资源的使用，以最大化准时处理的包裹数量，并用遗传算法求解。
Abstract We investigate a specific truck scheduling problem at cross-docks in the postal service industry on an operational level aiming to maximise the number of duly parcels assuming fixed departure times of the outbound trucks. The inbound gates and the conveyors as means of transportation inside the hub constitute the bottleneck resources. As a novel extension, we propose flexible unloading speeds to efficiently utilise the scarce resources. We formalise the problem with a mixed integer program and explicitly incorporate controllable unloading speeds of the inbound trucks. We determine the computational complexity and develop a genetic algorithm to efficiently solve the problem. Our investigation focuses on both the performance of the genetic algorithm and the applicability of the results in a real-world environment by implementing scheduling policies in a simulation model that considers individual parcel interactions. Based on our experimental results, we can state that especially in problem settings with scarce conveyor capacities, our approach to incorporate controllable unloading speeds has the potential of significantly increasing the number of duly parcels.