Dynamex is a leading provider of same-day delivery and logistics services in Canada and United States. The company serves between 1,200 and 1,500 requests daily in Greater Vancouver area using a fleet of more than 100 vehicles. The city network has around 60,000 intersections, with about 10,000 of them being main road intersections. Very few of the requests are known in advance. The requests differ in type and nature of their load. The type of a request define the time allowed between the earliest pickup time and the latest delivery time. Usually the load is ready for pickup at the time of the call. The nature of a load specifies the number of items and their weight.
The dispatcher's job is hard and stressful. The objective of this project is to research methods and policies for solving the real-time dispatching problem and then build a real time computer system prototype which will eventually form a part of the overall dispatching system assisting the dispatcher performing same-day pick-up and delivery requests online.
FDM Software is building a prototype for schuduling patient transfer, a real-time problem, for patients in greater Vancouver area. Every day a couple of hundred of patients in hospitals, nursing homes or residences have appointments for special tests or appointment with specialists in other care facilities. BC ambulance provides dedicated service to these patients on a daily basis. A fleet of ambulances are located throughout the Greater Vancouver area. The need for a better service became apparent due to ever-increasing complaints and criticisms directed towards BC Ambulance, by hospitals, nursing homes and the public. A missed appointment results in a patient tying up an acute care bed, waiting for a diagnostic procedure for a longer period than necessary.
Mobile Knowledge is interested in the following dispatching problem. Taxi, bus and limo companies offer a service to passengers referred to as 'Shared Ride'. With this service, companies can offer a reduce fare if a passenger is willing to share the vehicle with other passengers and stop for other pickups and drop offs. The problem is how do you compute the efficient use of vehicles with various capacity to pick up from multiple locations and drop off at multiple locations on the same trip, without violating predefined service criteria. The problem is an online multicriteria optimization problem involving the following objective functions.