Abstract: How to allocate and schedule vehicles rationally is one of the main considerations for the operations management of car rental companies. Rational allocation and scheduling is also the effective way that can increase the car rental rates and profits. In this paper, with a view to the current key operation features of domestic car rental companies, for instance, lack of historical data, short lead time for booking, short rental term,and short distance between the stores, we consider the frequent and complicated short-term fleet deployment problem. We present the formulation of a random expectation model for single-day deployment problem, use a reasonable method for model decomposition, select the particle swarm algorithm to solve the sub-models, and demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach by a numerical example. This approach can help the managers of car rental companies make the right decisions, improve customer satisfaction, and in the same time, increase rental rates and profits.

Key words: operations research, capacity planning, particle swarm optimization, short-term fleet deployment in car rental industry

摘要： 合理的车辆配置与调度是租车公司运营管理考虑的主要问题之一,也是提高租车公司的租车率和收益的有效途径。针对目前我国租车公司普遍缺乏历史数据、预定提前期短、租期短、门店间距离短等主要运营特点,本文将租车公司运营中频繁而复杂的短期车辆配置问题作为研究对象,提出单日的车辆配置方法,构建随机期望模型,并采用合理的方法分解模型,选择粒子群算法对子模型进行求解,并用数值算例验证了该方法的可行性与效果。该方法能够帮助租车公司管理者做出正确的决策,在提升顾客满意度的同时,提高租车率和租车公司的收益。

关键词: 运筹学, 能力规划, 粒子群算法, 汽车租赁短期车辆配置