A tabu search heuristic for the truck and trailer routing problem

Two new construction heuristics and a tabu search heuristic are presented for the truck and trailer routing problem, a variant of the vehicle routing problem. Computational results indicate that the heuristics are competitive to the existing approaches. The tabu search algorithm obtained better solutions for each of 21 benchmark problems.     

A note on the truck and trailer routing problem

This study considers the relaxed truck and trailer routing problem (RTTRP), a relaxation of the truck and trailer routing problem (TTRP). TTRP is a variant of the well studied vehicle routing problem (VRP). In TTRP, a fleet of trucks and trailers are used to service a set of customers with known demands. Some customers may be serviced by a truck pulling a trailer, while the others may only be serviced by a single truck. This is the main difference between TTRP and VRP. The number of available trucks and available trailers is limited in the original TTRP but there are no fixed costs associated with the use of trucks or trailers. Therefore, it is reasonable to relax this fleet size constraint to see if it is possible to further reduce the total routing cost (distance). In addition, the resulting RTTRP can also be used to determine a better fleet mix. We developed a simulated annealing heuristic for solving RTTRP and tested it on 21 existing TTRP benchmark problems and 36 newly generated TTRP instances. Computational results indicate that the solutions for RTTRP are generally better than the best solutions in the literature for TTRP. The proposed SA heuristic is able to find better solutions to 18 of the 21 existing benchmark TTRP instances. The solutions for the remaining three problems are tied with the best so far solutions in the literature. For the 36 newly generated problems, the average percentage improvement of RTTRP solutions over TTRP solutions is about 5%. Considering the ever rising crude oil price, even small reduction in the route length is significant.     

Solving the truck and trailer routing problem based on a simulated annealing heuristic

In this study, we consider the application of a simulated annealing (SA) heuristic to the truck and trailer routing problem (TTRP), a variant of the vehicle routing problem (VRP). In the TTRP, some customers can be serviced by either a complete vehicle (that is, a truck pulling a trailer) or a single truck, while others can only be serviced by a single truck for various reasons. SA has seen widespread applications to various combinatorial optimization problems, including the VRP. However, to our best knowledge, it has not been applied to the TTRP. So far, all the best known results for benchmark TTRP instances were obtained using tabu search (TS). We applied SA to the TTRP and obtained 17 best solutions to the 21 benchmark TTRP benchmark problems, including 11 new best solutions. Moreover, the computational time required by the proposed SA heuristic is less than those reported in prior studies. The results suggest that SA is competitive with TS on solving the TTRP.     

A multi-start iterated local search with tabu list and path relinking for the two-echelon location-routing problem

The two-echelon location-routing problem (LRP-2E) is raised by the design of transportation networks with two types of trips: first-level trips serving from one main depot a set of satellite depots, to be located, and second-level trips supplying customers from these satellites. In the proposed multi-start iterated local search (MS-ILS), three greedy randomized heuristics are used cyclically to get initial solutions. Each ILS run alternates between two search spaces: LRP-2E solutions, and travelling salesman (TSP) tours covering the main depot and the customers. The number of iterations allotted to a run is reduced whenever a known solution (stored in a tabu list) is revisited. MS-ILS can be reinforced by a path-relinking procedure (PR), used internally for intensification, as post-optimization, or both. On two sets with 24 and 30 LRP-2E instances, MS-ILS outperforms on average two GRASP algorithms and adding PR brings a further improvement. Our metaheuristic also surpasses a tabu search on 30 instances for a more general problem with several main depots. It is still effective on a particular case, the capacitated location-routing problem (CLRP): In a comparison with four published metaheuristics, only one (LRGTS, Prins et al., 2007) does better.     

GRASP with path relinking for the symmetric Euclidean clustered traveling salesman problem

In this paper, we propose new heuristics using several path-relinking strategies to solve the Clustered Traveling Salesman Problem (CTSP). The CTSP is a generalization of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) in which the set of vertices is partitioned into clusters and the objective is to find a minimum cost Hamiltonian cycle such that the vertices of each cluster are visited continuously. A comparison among the performance of the several different adopted path-relinking strategies is presented using instances with up to 2000 vertices and clusters varying between 4 and 150 vertices. Also computational experiments were performed to compare the performance of the proposed heuristics with an exact algorithm and a Genetic Algorithm. The obtained computational results showed that the proposed heuristics were able to obtain competitive results related to the quality of the solutions and computational execution time.     

GRASP and path relinking for the equitable dispersion problem

The equitable dispersion problem consists in selecting a subset of elements from a given set in such a way that a measure of dispersion is maximized. In particular, we target the Max-Mean dispersion model in which the average distance between the selected elements is maximized. We first review previous methods and mathematical formulations for this and related dispersion problems and then propose a GRASP with a Path Relinking in which the local search is based on the Variable Neighborhood methodology. Our method is specially suited for instances in which the distances represent affinity and are not restricted to take non-negative values. The computational experience with 120 instances shows the merit of the proposed procedures compared to previous methods.     

A heuristic method for the vehicle routing problem with backhauls and inventory

The purpose of this paper is to determine the route of the vehicle routing problem with backhauls (VRPB), delivering new items and picking up the reused items or wastes, and resolve the inventory control decision problem simultaneously since the regular VRPB does not. Both the vehicle routing decision for delivery and pickup, and the inventory control decision affect each other and must be considered together. Hence, a mathematical model of vehicle routing problem with backhauls and inventory (VRPBI) is proposed. Since finding the optimal solution(s) for VRPBI is a NP-hard problem, this paper proposes a heuristic method, variable neighborhood tabu search (VNTS), adopting six neighborhood searching approaches to obtain the optimal solution. Moreover, this paper compares the proposed heuristic method with two other existing heuristic methods. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method is better than the two other methods in terms of average logistic cost (transportation cost and inventory cost).     

Statistical analysis of distance-based path relinking for the capacitated vehicle routing problem

In this paper we develop an intelligent path relinking procedure for the capacitated vehicle routing problem, based on the relocate distance. This procedure transforms an incumbent solution into a guiding solution in a minimal number of relocate moves. In each step of the path relinking procedure, one customer is removed from the solution and re-inserted in another position.     

A hybrid column generation with GRASP and path relinking for the network load balancing problem

In this paper, a hybrid meta-heuristic is proposed which combines the GRASP with path relinking method and Column Generation. The key idea of this method is to run a GRASP with path relinking search on a restricted search space, defined by Column Generation, instead of running the search on the complete search space of the problem. Moreover, column generation is used not only to compute the initial restricted search space but also to modify it during the whole algorithm. The proposed heuristic is used to solve the network load balancing problem: given a capacitated telecommunications network with single path routing and an estimated traffic demand matrix, the network load balancing problem is the determination of a routing path for each traffic commodity such that the network load balancing is optimized, i.e., the worst link load is minimized, among all such solutions, the second worst link load is minimized, and continuing in this way until all link loads are minimized. The computational results presented in this paper show that, for the network load balancing problem, the proposed heuristic is effective in obtaining better quality solutions in shorter running times.     

求解多车型校车路径问题的带参数选择机制的GRASP算法

考虑到校车路径安排过程中不同车型容量和成本的差异,建立了多车型校车路径问题(SBRP)模型,并提出了一种带参数选择机制的贪婪随机自适应(GRASP)算法进行求解。在初始解构造阶段,设计一组阈值参数控制受限候选列表(RCL)的大小,使用轮盘赌法选择阈值参数。完成初始解构造后,使用可变邻域搜索(VNS)进行邻域解改进,并记录所选择的参数和解的目标值。算法迭代过程中,先设置相同阈值参数的选择概率,每隔若干次迭代后,评估每个阈值参数的性能并修改其选择概率,使得算法能够得到更好的平均解。使用基准测试案例进行了测试,比较了基本GRASP算法与设计的GRASP算法的性能,并与现有求解多车型校车路径问题的算法进行对比,实验结果表明所设计的算法是有效的。     

A hybrid variable neighborhood tabu search heuristic for the vehicle routing problem with multiple time windows

This paper presents a new hybrid variable neighborhood-tabu search heuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Time windows. It also proposes a minimum backward time slack algorithm applicable to a multiple time windows environment. This algorithm records the minimum waiting time and the minimum delay during route generation and adjusts the arrival and departure times backward. The implementation of the proposed heuristic is compared to an ant colony heuristic on benchmark instances involving multiple time windows. Computational results on newly generated instances are provided.     

GRASP with evolutionary path-relinking for the capacitated arc routing problem

The Capacitated Arc Routing Problem (CARP) is a well-known NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem where, given an undirected graph, the objective is to find a minimum cost set of tours servicing a subset of required edges under vehicle capacity constraints. There are numerous applications for the CARP, such as street sweeping, garbage collection, mail delivery, school bus routing, and meter reading. A Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP) with Path-Relinking (PR) is proposed and compared with other successful CARP metaheuristics. Some features of this GRASP with PR are (i) reactive parameter tuning, where the parameter value is stochastically selected biased in favor of those values which historically produced the best solutions in average; (ii) a statistical filter, which discard initial solutions if they are unlikely to improve the incumbent best solution; (iii) infeasible local search, where high-quality solutions, though infeasible, are used to explore the feasible/infeasible boundaries of the solution space; (iv) evolutionary PR, a recent trend where the pool of elite solutions is progressively improved by successive relinking of pairs of elite solutions. Computational tests were conducted using a set of 81 instances, and results reveal that the GRASP is very competitive, achieving the best overall deviation from lower bounds and the highest number of best solutions found.     

A general variable neighborhood search for the swap-body vehicle routing problem

The Swap-Body Vehicle Routing Problem, a generalization of the well known Vehicle Routing Problem, can be stated as follows: the vehicle fleet consisting of trucks, semi-trailers, and swap bodies, is available at a single depot to serve a given set of customers. To serve a subset of customers, one may use either a truck carrying one swap body or a train (a truck with a semi-trailer attached to it) carrying two swap bodies. In both cases, a vehicle (a truck or a train) must perform a route starting and ending at the depot, so to satisfy demands of visited customers, maximal allowed route duration, allowed load on the used vehicle, and accessibility constraint of each customer. The accessibility constraint indicates whether a customer is allowed to be visited by a train or not. In addition, a set of swap locations is given where semi-trailers and swap bodies may be parked or swapped. The goal of the Swap-Body Vehicle Routing Problem is to minimize the total costs consisting of the fixed costs for using vehicles and costs for performing routes. In this paper, we propose two general variable neighborhood search heuristics to solve this problem. The quality of the proposed methods is evaluated on the instances provided by the organizers of VeRolog Solver Challenge 2014.     

A comparative study between dynamic adapted PSO and VNS for the vehicle routing problem with dynamic requests

Combinatorial optimization problems are usually modeled in a static fashion. In this kind of problems, all data are known in advance, i.e. before the optimization process has started. However, in practice, many problems are dynamic, and change while the optimization is in progress. For example, in the dynamic vehicle routing problem (DVRP), new orders arrive when the working day plan is in progress. In this case, routes must be reconfigured dynamically while executing the current simulation. The DVRP is an extension of a conventional routing problem, its main interest being the connection to many real word applications (repair services, courier mail services, dial-a-ride services, etc.). In this article, a DVRP is examined, and solving methods based on particle swarm optimization and variable neighborhood search paradigms are proposed. The performance of both approaches is evaluated using a new set of benchmarks that we introduce here as well as existing benchmarks in the literature. Finally, we measure the behavior of both methods in terms of dynamic adaptation.     

A GRASP heuristic using path‐relinking and restarts for the Steiner traveling salesman problem

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is one of the most studied problems in combinatorial optimization. Given a set of nodes and the distances between them, it consists in finding the shortest route that visits each node exactly once and returns to the first. Nevertheless, more flexible and applicable formulations of this problem exist and can be considered. The Steiner TSP (STSP) is a variant of the TSP that assumes that only a given subset of nodes must be visited by the shortest route, eventually visiting some nodes and edges more than once. In this paper, we adapt some classical TSP constructive heuristics and neighborhood structures to the STSP variant. In particular, we propose a reduced 2‐opt neighborhood and we show that it leads to better results in smaller computation times. Computational results with an implementation of a GRASP heuristic using path‐relinking and restarts are reported. In addition, ten large test instances are generated. All instances and their best‐known solutions are made available for download and benchmarking purposes.     

A GRASP with path-relinking heuristic for the survivable IP/MPLS-over-WSON multi-layer network optimization problem

In this paper we deal with the survivable internet protocol (IP)/multi-protocol label switching (MPLS)-over-wavelength switched optical network (WSON) multi-layer network optimization problem (SIMNO). This problem entails planning an IP/MPLS network layer over a photonic mesh infrastructure whilst, at the same time, ensuring the highest availability of services and minimizing the capital expenditures (CAPEX) investments. Such a problem is currently identified as an open issue among network operators, and hence, its solution is of great interest. To tackle SIMNO, we first provide an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation which provides an insight into the complexity of its managing. Then, a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) with path-relinking (PR) together with a biased random-key genetic algorithm (BRKGA) are specifically developed to help solve the problem. The performance of both heuristics is exhaustively tested and compared making use of various network and traffic instances. Numerical experiments show the benefits of using GRASP instead of BRKGA when dealing with highly complex network scenarios. Moreover, we verified that the use of GRASP with PR remarkably improves the basic GRASP algorithm, particularly in real-sized, complex scenarios such as those proposed in this paper.     

Variable neighborhood search for the inventory routing and scheduling problem in a supply chain

The inventory, routing and scheduling decisions are three major driving factors for supply chain performance. Since they are related to one another in a supply chain, they should be determined simultaneously to improve the decision quality. In the past, the inventory policy, vehicle routing and vehicle scheduling are determined sequentially and separately. Hence, the total cost (inventory, routing and vehicle costs) would increase. In this paper, an integrated model for the inventory routing and scheduling problem (IRSP) is proposed. Since searching for the optimal solution for this model is a non-polynomial (NP) problem, a metaheuristic, variable neighborhood search (VNS), is proposed. The proposed method was compared with other existing methods. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method is better than other methods in terms of average cost per day.     

Solving bi-objective flow shop problem with hybrid path relinking algorithm

This paper presents and investigates different ways to integrate path relinking techniques into the hypervolume-based multi-objective local search algorithm (HBMOLS). We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of different path relinking strategies, these strategies focus on two main steps: the ways of path generation and the mechanisms of solutions selection. We propose different methods to establish the path relinking algorithms in a multi-objective context. Computational results on a bi-objective flow shop problem (FSP) and a statistical comparison are reported in the paper. In comparison with two versions of HBMOLS, the algorithms selecting a set of solutions located in the middle of the generated path are efficient. The behavior of these algorithms sheds light on ways to further improvements.     

Tabu search with path relinking for an integrated production–distribution problem

This paper deals with the problem of integrating production and distribution planning over periods of a finite horizon. We consider a capacity-constrained plant that produces a number of items distributed by a fleet of homogenous vehicles to customers with known demand for each item in each period. The production planning defines the amount of each item produced in every period, while the distribution planning defines when customers should be visited, the amount of each item that should be delivered to customers, and the vehicle routes. The objective is to minimize production and inventory costs at the plant, inventory costs at the customers and distribution costs. We propose two tabu search variants for this problem, one that involves construction and a short-term memory, and one that incorporates a longer term memory used to integrate a path relinking procedure to the first variant. The proposed tabu search variants are tested on generated instances with up to ten items and on instances from the literature involving a single item.     

A GRASP×ELS for the vehicle routing problem with basic three-dimensional loading constraints

This paper addresses an extension of the capacitated vehicle routing problem where the client demand consists of three-dimensional weighted items (3L-CVRP). The objective is to design a set of trips for a homogeneous fleet of vehicles based at a depot node which minimizes the total transportation cost. Items in each vehicle trip must satisfy the three-dimensional orthogonal packing constraints. This problem is strongly connected to real-life transportation systems where the packing of items to be delivered by each vehicle can have a significant impact on the routes. We propose a new way to solve the packing sub-problem. It consists of a two-step procedure in which the z-constraints are first relaxed to get a (x,y) positioning of the items. Then, a compatible z-coordinate is computed to get a packing solution. Items can be rotated but additional constraints such as item fragility, support and LIFO are not considered. This method is included in a GRASP×ELS hybrid algorithm dedicated to the computation of VRP routes. The route optimization alternates between two search spaces: the space of VRP routes and the space of giant trips. The projection from one to the other is done by dedicated procedures (namely the Split and the concatenation algorithms). Moreover, a Local Search is defined on each search space. Furthermore, hash tables are used to store the result of the packing checks and thus save a substantial amount of CPU time. The effectiveness of our approach is illustrated by computational experiments on 3L-CVRP instances from the literature. A new set of realistic instances based on the 96 French districts are also proposed. They range from 19 nodes for the small instances to 255 nodes for the large instances and they can be stated as realistic since they are based on true travel distances in kilometers between French cities. The impact of the hash tables is illustrated as well.