A decision support system for the single-depot vehicle rescheduling problem

Disruptions in trips can prevent vehicles from executing their schedules as planned. Mechanical failures, accidents, and traffic congestion often hinder a vehicle schedule. When a vehicle on a scheduled trip breaks down, one or more vehicles need to be rescheduled to serve the passengers/cargo (if there are any) on that trip. The main objective of the vehicle rescheduling problem (VRSP) is to minimize operation and delay costs, while serving the passengers/cargo on the disrupted trip and completing all remaining trips that include the disrupted one. We report on a prototype decision support system (DSS) that recommends solutions for the single-depot rescheduling as well as vehicle scheduling (VSP) problems, since VRSP is closely related to VSP. The system was designed for human schedulers to obtain optimal vehicle assignments and reassignments. An experimental study, using randomly generated data, shows the efficiency of the developed algorithm. A real world problem, which involves the solid waste collection operational planning for a Brazilian city, is selected as the case study to illustrate the effectiveness of the developed DSS. 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.