Flow diversion approaches for shipment routing in automatic shipment handling systems

The integrated automated shipment handling systems (IASHS) in large freight terminals and distribution centers are complex and are increasingly congested due to the increase of freight volume. Shipments in IASHS need to be handled by a large amount of equipment. Thus, optimization-based tactical and operational planning models and methods for how to route the shipments through the network of equipment in IASHS are required for reducing the shipment transit time. This paper studies a static and an adaptive flow diversion approaches for routing shipments from their origins to their destinations. The approaches are compared to the classical shortest path oriented strategies. Furthermore, the paper investigates the possibility of using the proposed approaches to determining the destination of a shipment dynamically