Convoy movement problem for combat supply distribution network on the battlefield

Abstract

The convoy movement problem involves the routing and scheduling of military convoys. While existing research has focused only on the routing and scheduling of convoys, this paper proposes a novel convoy movement problem that incorporates the location-allocation problem, thus making it significantly more comprehensive and useful for real-world scenarios. Our framing of the problem also has a significant impact on military logistics, enabling the more efficient transportation of military supplies during wartime. Our problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model, and we develop a matheuristic algorithm consisting of two phases that are executed iteratively to solve it. In the first phase, an optimisation solver is used to generate an origin and destination pair for a convoy and the quantity of each supply type to be transported. In the second phase, we employ an ant colony optimisation algorithm to determine the final solution based on the results of the first phase. Computational experiments show that the proposed matheuristic algorithm outperforms a commercial solver in terms of performance and computational time. Furthermore, we analyse the impact of changes to the headway time, time windows, and network density on the problem, thus producing valuable insights for military decision-makers.

KEYWORDS:

• Convoy movement problem
• matheuristic
• military logistics
• ant colony optimisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of interest statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Data availability statement

Data available on request from the authors

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Byung Jun Ju

Byung Jun Ju is currently Ph.D. student in Industrial Engineering at Yonsei University. He also received the M.S in Industrial Engineering at Seoul University. His research interests include supply chain management and optimisation algorithm.

Byung Do Chung

Byung Do Chung is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Yonsei University. He received the Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He also received the M.S. and B.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering at Yonsei University. His research interests include supply chain management, smart factory, and optimisation.