Ana Moura * ‡
José F. Oliveira † ‡
* ESTiG - Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança
†FEUP - Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto
‡ INESC Porto - Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores do Porto
]]> Title: A multi-phase heuristic for the delivery pick-up vehicle-routing problem with time-windows
Abstract:
In this paper a new heuristic for the vehicle routing problem is presented. This algorithm was applied to a problem originated from a Portuguese alimentary products distribution company. This company has many clients and more then 130 deliveries per day for all products. When considering these figures, the vehicle routing problem becomes too much complex to be manually solved. The necessity of automatization naturally arises.
This new multi-phase heuristic has a constructive phase, a local optimisation phase and a pos-optimisation phase, and aims the minimization of the sum of the routes total time. Additional constraints to the vehicle routing problem, driven by the particular company that motivated this work, are considered. In particular time-windows both for the drivers and for the clients and pick-up together with deliveries are considered.
Keywords: Vehicle routing problem, Time-windows, Pick-up and delivery, Multiple travelling salesman problem, heuristics
Resumo:
Neste artigo apresenta-se uma nova heurística para a determinação de rotas para veículos, aplicada a uma empresa portuguesa de distribuição de produtos alimentares. Esta empresa é detentora de uma grande carteira de clientes, realizando perto de cento e trinta entregas diárias de vários tipos de produtos. A necessidade da automatização do processo de determinação das rotas dos veículos surge naturalmente neste contexto.
Esta nova heurística composta tem uma fase construtiva, uma fase de optimização local e uma fase de pós-optimização, sendo o objectivo a minimização do tempo total dos percursos. São ainda incorporadas restrições adicionais derivadas da aplicação concreta que motivou o presente trabalho. Em particular são consideradas janelas temporais, quer para os condutores/veículos quer para os clientes, e recolhas de vasilhame em simultâneo com as entregas de mercadorias.
]]>Texto completo apenas disponível em PDF.
Full text only available in PDF format.
Referências
Croes, A., "A method for solving travelling salesman problem'', Operations Research (1958), 6, 791-812. [ Links ]
Derigs, U., and Metz, A., "A matching-based approach for solving a delivery pick-up vehicle-routing problem with time constraints'', OR Spektrum, (1992) 14 (2), 91-106. [ Links ]
Gendreau, M., Laporte, G., and Vigo, D., "Heuristics for the travelling salesman problem with pickup and delivery'', Computers & Operations Research, (1999) 26, 699-714. [ Links ]
Helsgaun, K., "An effective implementation of the Lin-Kernighan travelling Salesman heuristic'', European Journal of Operational Research, (2000) 126(1), 106-130. [ Links ]
Johnson, D., and McGeoch, L., "The Traveling Salesman Problem: a case study in local optimization'', Local Search in Combinatorial Optimization, E.H.L. Aarts and J.K. Lenstra (eds.), Wiley, N.Y., (1995), 215-310. [ Links ]
Laporte, G., "The vehicle routing problem: An overview of exact and approximated algorithms'', European Journal of Operational Research, (1992), 59(2), 345-358. [ Links ]
Laporte, G., Gendreau, M., Potvin, J., and Semet, F., "Classical and modern heuristics for the Vehicle routing problem'', International Transactions in Operational Research, (2000) 7, 285-300. [ Links ]
Laporte, G., "The travelling salesman problem: An overview of exact and approximated algorithms'', European Journal of Operational Research, (1992), 59(2), 231-248. [ Links ]
Lin, S., "Computer solutions to the travelling salesman problem'', Bell System Technical Journal, (1965) 44, 2245-69. [ Links ]
Lin, S., and Kernighan, B., "An effective heuristic algorithm for the travelling salesman problem'', Operations Research, (1973) 21, 498-516. [ Links ]
]]>