Route optimisation for sustainable cold chain logistics: a collaborative distribution model considering on-demand reuse of returnable transport items

Using returnable transport items (RTIs) and implementing collaborative distribution are effective ways to improve the sustainability of cold chain logistics (CCL). The demand for reuse of RTIs makes it necessary for cold chain distribution services to consider the distribution of goods and the reuse of RTIs, which brings new challenges to the distribution management decisions of CCL firms. To address the above challenges, this paper explores the collaborative multi-centre vehicle routing problem considering the on-demand reuse of RTIs (CMVRP-ODRRTI) in a cold chain distribution scenario. Specifically, cold chain distribution centres collaborate to deliver products and recycle empty RTIs on demand. Firstly, the CMVRP-ODRRTI is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model to minimise the total cost, including fixed cost, fuel consumption cost, carbon emission cost, penalty cost of violating time windows, cost of damages, and inventory holding cost of RTIs. Further, a hybrid adaptive simulated annealing and tempering algorithm (HASATA) is used to solve the model. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed model and the HASATA is verified through numerical experiments and a case study of a cold chain distribution enterprise.