A metaheuristic for the time-dependent vehicle routing problem considering driving hours regulations – An application in city logistics

Abstract New retail trends show the increasing importance of providing cost efficient deliveries in cities, where congestion and compliance with driving hours regulations should be incorporated into routing software. This paper introduces a large neighbourhood search algorithm that substantially improves the benchmark solutions (in terms of the number of vehicles required, travel distance and duty time) for the vehicle routing problem variant considering time windows, time-dependent travel times and driving hours regulations (EC) 561/2006 that apply to vehicles over 3.5 tons in European cities. Additionally, instances for The Road Transport (Working Time) Regulation 2005 that applies to drivers in the United Kingdom are introduced. The proposed algorithm is also used in scenarios that represent home delivery conditions to evaluate the impacts of the length of time windows, customer density, congestion and regulations in terms of cost and environmental impact.

[1]  Stephen E. Lunce,et al.  Success and failure of pure-play organizations: Webvan versus Peapod, a comparative analysis , 2006, Ind. Manag. Data Syst..

[2]  Ali Haghani,et al.  A dynamic vehicle routing problem with time-dependent travel times , 2005, Comput. Oper. Res..

[3]  Simona Mancini,et al.  Time dependent travel speed vehicle routing and scheduling on a real road network: the case of Torino , 2014 .

[4]  Roberto Montemanni,et al.  Time dependent vehicle routing problem with a multi ant colony system , 2008, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[5]  Juan José Miranda Bront,et al.  An integer programming approach for the time-dependent traveling salesman problem with time windows , 2017, Comput. Oper. Res..

[6]  Anker Jensen,et al.  Truck drivers hours-of-service regulations and occupational health. , 2009, Work.

[7]  Michel Gendreau,et al.  Vehicle dispatching with time-dependent travel times , 2003, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[8]  Michel Gendreau,et al.  A guide to vehicle routing heuristics , 2002, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[9]  Simona Mancini,et al.  A combined multistart random constructive heuristic and set partitioning based formulation for the vehicle routing problem with time dependent travel times , 2017, Comput. Oper. Res..

[10]  Tom Van Woensel,et al.  Branch and Price for the Time-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows , 2013, Transp. Sci..

[11]  David Pisinger,et al.  A general heuristic for vehicle routing problems , 2007, Comput. Oper. Res..

[12]  Michel Gendreau,et al.  Time-dependent routing problems: A review , 2015, Comput. Oper. Res..

[13]  Geir Hasle,et al.  Software Tools and Emerging Technologies for Vehicle Routing and Intermodal Transportation , 2014, Vehicle Routing.

[14]  Elias W. Hans,et al.  A dynamic programming heuristic for vehicle routing with time-dependent travel times and required breaks , 2010 .

[15]  J. M. J. Schutten,et al.  Restricted dynamic programming: A flexible framework for solving realistic VRPs , 2012, Comput. Oper. Res..

[16]  Jan Fabian Ehmke,et al.  Advanced routing for city logistics service providers based on time-dependent travel times , 2012, J. Comput. Sci..

[17]  Jesús González-Feliu,et al.  Vehicle routing problems for city logistics , 2017, EURO J. Transp. Logist..

[18]  Bernhard Fleischmann,et al.  Time-Varying Travel Times in Vehicle Routing , 2004, Transp. Sci..

[19]  Michael Drexl,et al.  Rich vehicle routing in theory and practice , 2012, Logist. Res..

[20]  David Pisinger,et al.  An Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search Heuristic for the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows , 2006, Transp. Sci..

[21]  George B. Dantzig,et al.  The Truck Dispatching Problem , 1959 .

[22]  Michel Gendreau,et al.  A hybrid genetic algorithm with adaptive diversity management for a large class of vehicle routing problems with time-windows , 2013, Comput. Oper. Res..

[23]  Michael Browne,et al.  Home Delivery and the Impacts on Urban Freight Transport: A Review , 2014 .

[24]  Gerrit K. Janssens,et al.  New heuristics for the Fleet Size and Mix Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows , 2002, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[25]  Kenneth K. Boyer,et al.  THE LAST MILE CHALLENGE: EVALUATING THE EFFECTS OF CUSTOMER DENSITY AND DELIVERY WINDOW PATTERNS , 2009 .

[26]  E. Voorde,et al.  Characteristics and Typology of Last-mile Logistics from an Innovation Perspective in an Urban Context , 2011 .

[27]  Asvin Goel,et al.  Vehicle Scheduling and Routing with Drivers' Working Hours , 2009, Transp. Sci..

[28]  Marius M. Solomon,et al.  Algorithms for the Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problems with Time Window Constraints , 1987, Oper. Res..

[29]  Will Maden,et al.  A Road TimetableTM to aid vehicle routing and scheduling , 2006, Comput. Oper. Res..

[30]  Richard W. Eglese,et al.  Investigating the use of metaheuristics for solving single vehicle routing problems with time-varying traversal costs , 2013, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[31]  Michel Gendreau,et al.  A unified solution framework for multi-attribute vehicle routing problems , 2014, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[32]  Miguel A. Figliozzi,et al.  The time dependent vehicle routing problem with time windows: Benchmark problems, an efficient solution algorithm, and solution characteristics , 2012 .

[33]  Erwin W. Hans,et al.  Vehicle routing under time-dependent travel times: The impact of congestion avoidance , 2012, Comput. Oper. Res..

[34]  Eiichi Taniguchi,et al.  Modeling City Logistics , 2002 .

[35]  Thibaut Vidal,et al.  Hours of Service Regulations in Road Freight Transport: An Optimization-based International Assessment , 2012, Transp. Sci..

[36]  Mark S. Daskin,et al.  Time Dependent Vehicle Routing Problems: Formulations, Properties and Heuristic Algorithms , 1992, Transp. Sci..

[37]  Guy Desaulniers,et al.  European Driver Rules in Vehicle Routing with Time Windows , 2009, Transp. Sci..

[38]  Tom Cherrett,et al.  A hybrid metaheuristic for the time-dependent vehicle routing problem with hard time windows , 2017 .

[39]  Richard W. Eglese,et al.  Choice-Based Demand Management and Vehicle Routing in E-Fulfillment , 2016, Transp. Sci..

[40]  Lawrence J. Ring,et al.  Viewpoint: the decline and fall of Internet grocery retailers , 2001 .