A robust winner determination problem for combinatorial transportation auctions under uncertain shipment volumes

作者：Remli Nabila; Rekik Monia^*

来源：Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies , 2013, 35: 204-217.

DOI：10.1016/j.trc.2013.07.006

• Combinatorial auctions
• Truckload procurement
• Uncertain shipment volumes
• 2-Stage robust optimization
• Constraint generation

Combinatorial auctions are widely used for the procurement of transportation services. In these auctions, shippers act as auctioneers who need to outsource a number of transportation services to external carriers. Carriers compete by submitting bids on packages of shippers%26apos; requests. After receiving all carriers%26apos; bids, the shipper solves the well-known winner determination problem (WDP) in order to determine winning bids. This paper considers the WDP in a context where shipment volumes are not known with certainty. Based on the bi-level characteristic of the problem, a 2-stage robust formulation is proposed and solved using a constraint generation algorithm. Experimental results show a good performance of the proposed approach. We also evaluate, through an experimental analysis, the benefits of considering a robust rather than a deterministic WDP.

• 出版日期2013-10