Mathematical programming approaches for optimizing horizontal collaboration in the freight transport sector

Scientific context

The logistics sector contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. The ACME project aims to reduce these emissions by promoting horizontal collaboration among industry stakeholders. For instance, companies with insufficient individual freight volumes can collaborate to jointly reserve and operate regular rail freight services, optimizing resources and lowering environmental impact. In this internship, we study these cooperations from a mathematical programming perspective.

Expected work

The objective of the internship is twofold. First, the aim is to identify an appropriate mechanism for allocating benefits across the members of a given coalition. Second, based on this mechanism, it aims to provide mathematical-programming based methods for solving large-scale instances of utualized scheduled service network design. The internship can be a step toward a PhD thesis (funded by the project).

Keywords: operations research, mixed-integer linear programming, decomposition methods, large-scale combinatorial problems, heuristics, game theory

ACME Project

The internship takes place within the ACME project, funded by the France 2030 program, PEPR MOBIDEC. This project is a collaboraytion between École des Ponts, the University of Bordeaux, Inria Grenoble, and Toulouse School of Economics.

Lien vers le site web du projet ;

Multimodal Collaborative Eco-friendly Logistics

A cross-disciplinary research project around collaborative supply chain operations.

acme-mobidec.github.io

Duration: 6 months

Supervisors: François Clautiaux (Université de Bordeaux), Axel Parmentier (École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées)

Application

Send a CV to francois.clautiaux@u-bordeaux.fr and, axel.parmentier@enpc.fr and specify in your e-mail your interest in the subject, as well as the e-mail addresses of two contacts for a reference.

Bibliography

T. G. Crainic and W. Rei, 50 years of Operations Research for the tactical planning of consolidation-based freight transportation, EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics 14 (2025), 100157 M. Hewib, T. G. Crainic, M. Nowak, and W. Rei, Scheduled service network design with resource acquisition and management under uncertainty, Transportation Research Part B: Methodological 128 (2019), 324–343. S. Lozano, P. Moreno, B. Adenso-Diaz, and E. Algaba, Cooperative game theory approach to allocating benefits of horizontal cooperation, European Journal of Operational Research 229 (2013), no. 2, 444–452.

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