Increasing competition and expectations from customers pressures carriers to further improve efficiency. Forming collaborations is essential for carriers to reach their targeted efficiency levels. In this study, we investigate an auction mechanism to facilitate collaboration amongst carriers while maintaining autonomy for the individual carriers. Multiple auction implementations are evaluated. As the underlying decision problem (which is a traditional vehicle routing problem) is known to be NP-hard, this auction mechanism has an important inherent complexity. Therefore, we use fast and efficient algorithms for the vehicle routing problem to ensure that the auction can be used in operational decision making. Numerical results are presented, indicating that the auction achieves a savings potential better than the thus far reported approaches in the literature. Managerial insights are discussed, particularly related to the properties of the auction and value of the information.

中文翻译：

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协作车辆路线拍卖：模型和算法

日益激烈的竞争和来自客户的期望迫使运营商进一步提高效率。建立合作关系对于运营商达到目标效率水平至关重要。在这项研究中，我们研究了一种拍卖机制，以促进承运人之间的协作，同时保持各个承运人的自主权。评估了多个拍卖实施。由于已知的基本决策问题（这是传统的车辆路径问题）是NP难的，因此这种拍卖机制具有重要的固有复杂性。因此，我们针对车辆路径问题使用快速高效的算法，以确保拍卖可用于运营决策。给出了数值结果，这表明与目前为止文献报道的方法相比，拍卖可以更好地实现节省潜力。讨论了管理见解，特别是与拍卖的性质和信息价值有关的见解。