Flow control for a class of transportation systems

We examine the flow control issues arising in dispatching vehicles of different capacities to a resource loading point from various other points in a transportation network. We provide a queueing model analysis which quantifies the trade-off between high throughput and high vehicle waiting times at the loading point. Next, motivated by "kanban" control policies in manufacturing systems, we propose a control mechanism regulating vehicle arrivals so that waiting times are significantly reduced without affecting the throughput. The objective is to reshape the vehicle arrival distribution, as seen by the loading point, by "smoothing" the arrival process and reducing its variance characteristics.