Robust Truckload Relay Network Design Under Demand Uncertainty

This research addresses the issue of incorporating demand uncertainty in the strategic design of relay networks for truckload transportation. An existing composite variable mathematical model for the design of hybrid relay networks is extended by developing its robust counterpart. The proposed approach considers uncertainty in the number of truckloads to be dispatched between a pair of nodes in the network which is characterized by a symmetric interval around the expected demand value. A two-step heuristic approach is used to solve the robust model. Several numerical experiments are carried out to study the differences between the solutions obtained with the robust approach and those generated by the existing deterministic model. In particular, we were interested in understating how different levels of uncertainty affect total cost of the system and the configuration of the resulting networks. At the end, numerical results are discussed and directions for future research are presented.