Tackling a VRP challenge to redistribute scarce equipment within time windows using metaheuristic algorithms

Autor(en)
Ahmed Kheiri, Alina-Gabriela Dragomir, David Müller, Joaquim Gromicho , Caroline Jagtenberg, Jelke J. van Hoorn
Abstrakt

This paper reports on the results of the VeRoLog Solver Challenge 2016 - 2017: the third solver challenge facilitated by VeRoLog, the EURO Working Group on Vehicle Routing and Logistics Optimization. The authors are the winners of second and third place in the challenge, combined with members of the challenge organizing committee. The problem central to the challenge was a rich VRP: expensive and therefore scarce equipment was to be redistributed over customer locations within time windows. The difficulty was in creating combinations of pickups and deliveries that reduce the amount of equipment needed to execute the schedule, as well as the lengths of the routes and the number of vehicles used. This paper gives a detailed description of the solution methods of the above-mentioned participants. The second place method involves sequences of 22 low level heuristics: each of these heuristics is associated with a transition probability to move to another low level heuristic. A randomly drawn sequence of these heuristics is applied to an initial solution, after which the probabilities are updated depending on whether or not this sequence improved the objective value, hence increasing the chance of selecting the sequences that generate improved solutions. The third place method decomposes the problem into two independent parts: first, it schedules the delivery days for all requests using a genetic algorithm. Each schedule in the genetic algorithm is evaluated by estimating its cost using a deterministic routing algorithm that constructs feasible routes for each day. After spending 80 percent of time in this phase, the last 20 percent of the computation time is spent on Variable Neighborhood Descent to further improve the routes found by the deterministic routing algorithm. This article finishes with an in-depth comparison of the results of the two approaches.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Business Decisions and Analytics
Externe Organisation(en)
Lancaster University, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Ortec International B.V., Technische Universität Wien
Journal
EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics
Band
8
Seiten
561-595
ISSN
2192-4376
Publikationsdatum
04-2019
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
502017 Logistik
Schlagwörter
Link zum Portal
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/tackling-a-vrp-challenge-to-redistribute-scarce-equipment-within-time-windows-using-metaheuristic-algorithms(5c8f944b-b2d3-4eef-af5d-716b9c32ebb2).html