A Tabu search heuristic for the vehicle routing problem with two-dimensional loading constraints

  • Authors:

  • Michel Gendreau;Manuel Iori;Gilbert Laporte;Silvaro Martello

  • Affiliations:

  • Centre de recherche sur les transports, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128 succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Canada H3C 3J7;Dipartimento di Scienze e Metodi dell'Ingegneria, Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Viale Amendola 2, 42100 Reggio Emilia, Italy;Canada Research Chair in Distribution Management, HEC Montréal, 3000 chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, Canada H3T 2A7;Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informatica e Sistemistica, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy

  • Venue:
  • Networks - Special Issue In Memory of Stefano Pallottino
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

This article addresses the well-known Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP), in the special case where the demand of a customer consists of a certain number of two-dimensional weighted items. The problem calls for the minimization of the cost of transportation needed for the delivery of the goods demanded by the customers, and carried out by a fleet of vehicles based at a central depot. In order to accommodate all items on the vehicles, a feasibility check of the two-dimensional packing (2L) must be executed on each vehicle. The overall problem, denoted as 2L-CVRP, is NP-hard and particularly difficult to solve in practice. We propose a Tabu Search algorithm, in which the loading component of the problem is solved through heuristics, lower bounds, and a truncated branch-and-bound procedure. The effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated through extensive computational experiments. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, 2008