An effective local search approach for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls

Authors:
Emmanouil E. Zachariadis;Chris T. Kiranoudis
Affiliations:
Department of Process Analysis and Plant Design, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece;Department of Process Analysis and Plant Design, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Venue:
Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
Year:
2012

Citing 5
Cited 1

Using Constraint Programming and Local Search Methods to Solve Vehicle Routing Problems

CP '98 Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming
An Exact Method for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls

Transportation Science
A Hybrid Guided Local Search for the Vehicle-Routing Problem with Intermediate Replenishment Facilities

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An open vehicle routing problem metaheuristic for examining wide solution neighborhoods

Computers and Operations Research
A strategy for reducing the computational complexity of local search-based methods for the vehicle routing problem

Computers and Operations Research

Comparing Static and Dynamic Policies for Vehicle Routing Problems with Backhauling and Dynamic Customer Demands

International Journal of Applied Logistics

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Abstract

This paper deals with a practical transportation model known as the Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls (VRPB), which aims at designing the minimum cost route set for satisfying both delivery and pick-up demands. In methodological terms, we propose a local search metaheuristic which explores rich solution neighborhoods composed of exchanges of variable-length customer sequences. To efficiently investigate these rich solution neighborhoods, tentative local search move are statically encoded by data structures stored in Fibonacci Heaps which are special priority queue structures offering fast minimum retrieval, insertion and deletion capabilities. To avoid cycling phenomena and induce diversification, we introduce the concept of promises, which is a parameter-free mechanism based on the regional aspiration criterion used in Tabu Search implementations. The proposed metaheuristic development was tested on well-known VRPB benchmark instances. It exhibited fine performance, as it consistently generated the best-known solutions for all the examined benchmark problems.