An Original Approach to Assess the Robustness of Road Freight Transport Plannings Based on a Dynamic Risk Identification

The road freight transport sector contributes significantly to the delivery of goods. Today, more than 90% of goods are conveyed using the road transport mode. In the same time, customers' requirements become more and more numerous and accurate, which increases the complexity of planner work. The aim of this work is to propose to planners robustness indicators measuring the chance the planned tour could respect the requirements. Based on a planning system giving several feasible daily schedules, our approach allows to dynamically identify the risks that could impact each planning and then simulate the influence of those risks on the plans' activities to assess the robustness indicators. They are composed of an indicator measuring the probability to respect the customers' requirements and two actionable data. These actionable data give to planners information on levers they could use to increase the robustness of the plan. [Submitted: 11 September 2020; Accepted: 27 April 2021]