A multimodal logistics service network design with time windows and environmental concerns

PLoS One. 2017 Sep 21;12(9):e0185001. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0185001. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

The design of a multimodal logistics service network with customer service time windows and environmental costs is an important and challenging issue. Accordingly, this work established a model to minimize the total cost of multimodal logistics service network design with time windows and environmental concerns. The proposed model incorporates CO2 emission costs to determine the optimal transportation mode combinations and investment selections for transfer nodes, which consider transport cost, transport time, carbon emission, and logistics service time window constraints. Furthermore, genetic and heuristic algorithms are proposed to set up the abovementioned optimal model. A numerical example is provided to validate the model and the abovementioned two algorithms. Then, comparisons of the performance of the two algorithms are provided. Finally, this work investigates the effects of the logistics service time windows and CO2 emission taxes on the optimal solution. Several important management insights are obtained.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Carbon Dioxide / analysis*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Costs and Cost Analysis
  • Environmental Monitoring / economics*
  • Environmental Monitoring / statistics & numerical data
  • Environmental Pollutants / analysis
  • Environmental Pollutants / economics*
  • Humans
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Transportation / economics*
  • Vehicle Emissions / analysis*

Substances

  • Environmental Pollutants
  • Vehicle Emissions
  • Carbon Dioxide

Grants and funding

The work that is described in this paper was supported by Central South University Teacher Research Fund (NO. 2015JSJJ001, DZZ receives funding), Hunan Province Science and Technology Development Funds (NO. 2015RS4045,SYL receives funding), Excellent youth project of Hunan Provincial Department of Education (NO.15B261, SYL receives funding) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO. 71672193, DZZ receives funding). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.