Title of article
On determiningoptimalfleetsizeandvehicletransferpolicyforacarrentalcompany
Author/Authors
Zhaolin Li، نويسنده , , Fengtao Chen، نويسنده ,
Issue Information
ماهنامه با شماره پیاپی سال 2010
Pages
10
From page
341
To page
350
Abstract
This paperconsidershowtodeterminetheoptimalfleetsizeandvehicletransferpolicyforarental-car
company thatservestwocities.Ineachcity,therearesingle-tripandround-tripcustomers,wherethe
former isgivenahigherpriority.Becauseofthesingle-triptraffic,thenumberofcarsatthesetwocities
may becomeunbalanced.Hence,thecentralplannerineachdayneedstodecidewhethertotransfer
any carsfromonecitytotheother.Wedevelopatwo-stagedynamicprogrammingmodel,inwhichwe
determine thevehicletransferpolicyinthesecondstageandtheoptimalfleetsizeinthefirststage.
Although theobjectivefunctioncouldbeneitherconcavenorquasi-concaveduetolostsales,wecan
find theoptimalfleetsizeandvehicletransferpolicybysolvingaseriesoflinearprogrammingproblems.
We proposeaheuristicsolution,whichisbasedonaspecialcaseanalysis,forthefleetsizeproblem.A
numerical studyrevealsthatourheuristicsolutionforthefleetsizeperformswell.However,ifthecor-
responding vehicletransferpolicyisnotappropriate,theoverallperformancecandrasticallydeteriorate
even withtheoptimalfleetsize.Severalextensionsofourbasicmodelarealsoanalyzed.
Keywords
Automobile rental , Fleet size management , Vehicle transfer , Markov decision process
Journal title
Computers and Operations Research
Serial Year
2010
Journal title
Computers and Operations Research
Record number
927650
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