The “Hub” and “Wheel” Scheduling Problems

The problem is that of scheduling truck movement (loaded and empty) between a central depot (the hub) and a number of outlying cities. Current demand is known deterministically, but future demand is uncertain. The myopic case treats two periods only: the current period and one future period. The objective is to minimize the expected total operating penalty, consisting of the costs of moving empties and the costs of delaying shipments. In two special cases the procedures of solution reduce to simple marginal analysis that has been previously solved by Minas and Mitten. In the general case, a network flow model is proposed that is easily solved.