A decision support system for vehicle fleet planning

摘要

A decision support system (DSS) is developed to solve the fleet planning problem. The system can be used by fleet managers to plan fleet size and mix. The decision support system was designed to assist managers in every step of the planning process: (i) To forecast demand; (ii) to determine relevant criteria; (iii) to generate alternative plans; (iv) to assess alternative plans with respect to the criteria determined in ii); and (v) to choose ‘the best’ plan. Emphasis of the decision support system is on flexibility. Another important feature of the decision support system is that it uses both a multicriteria approach to evaluate alternative plans and a stochastic programming model to generate plans. The system can be used to answer a wide variety of ‘What if’ questions with potentially significant cost impacts. The example provided shows how the DSS can be useful to improve vehicle fleet planning.