Scatter search for a real-life heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem with time windows and split deliveries in Brazil

In this paper, we consider a real-life heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem with time windows and split deliveries that occurs in a major Brazilian retail group. A single depot attends 519 stores of the group distributed in 11 Brazilian states. To find good solutions to this problem, we propose heuristics as initial solutions and a scatter search (SS) approach. Next, the produced solutions are compared with the routes actually covered by the company. Our results show that the total distribution cost can be reduced significantly when such methods are used. Experimental testing with benchmark instances is used to assess the merit of our proposed procedure.

[1]  F.-H. Liu,et al.  The fleet size and mix vehicle routing problem with time windows , 1999, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

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

[3]  Moshe Dror,et al.  Savings by Split Delivery Routing , 1989, Transp. Sci..

[4]  Moshe Dror,et al.  Vehicle routing with split deliveries , 1994, Discret. Appl. Math..

[5]  J. W. Giffin,et al.  The split delivery vehicle scheduling problem with time windows and grid network distances , 1995, Comput. Oper. Res..

[6]  Michel Gendreau,et al.  A tabu search heuristic for the heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem , 1999, Comput. Oper. Res..

[7]  M. Dror,et al.  Split delivery routing , 1990 .

[8]  F. Glover.  HEURISTICS FOR INTEGER PROGRAMMING USING SURROGATE CONSTRAINTS , 1977 .

[9]  Ibrahim H. Osman,et al.  Tabu search variants for the mix fleet vehicle routing problem , 2002, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[10]  Yves Rochat,et al.  A Tabu Search Approach for Delivering Pet Food and Flour in Switzerland , 1994 .

[11]  Joaquín A. Pacheco,et al.  Optimizing the periodic pick-up of raw materials for a manufacturer of auto parts , 2007, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[12]  Bruce L. Golden,et al.  A new heuristic for determining fleet size and composition , 1986 .

[13]  Matteo Salani,et al.  Branch and price for the vehicle routing problem with discrete split deliveries and time windows , 2011, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[14]  Said Salhi,et al.  Incorporating vehicle routing into the vehicle fleet composition problem , 1993 .

[15]  José-Manuel Belenguer,et al.  A Lower Bound for the Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem , 2000, Oper. Res..

[16]  César Rego,et al.  A Scatter Search Tutorial for Graph-Based Permutation Problems , 2005 .

[17]  Christos D. Tarantilis,et al.  A threshold accepting metaheuristic for the heterogeneous fixed fleet vehicle routing problem , 2004, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[18]  Éric D. Taillard,et al.  A heuristic column generation method for the heterogeneous fleet VRP , 1999, RAIRO Oper. Res..

[19]  Moshe Dror,et al.  Split-delivery routeing heuristics in livestock feed distribution , 1997 .

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

[21]  Dag Haugland,et al.  A tabu search heuristic for the vehicle routing problem with time windows and split deliveries , 2004, Comput. Oper. Res..

[22]  Bahram Alidaee,et al.  Metaheuristic Optimization via Memory and Evolution: Tabu Search and Scatter Search (Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series) , 2005 .

[23]  Ángel Corberán,et al.  Heuristic solutions to the problem of routing school buses with multiple objectives , 2002, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[24]  Martin W. P. Savelsbergh,et al.  Worst-Case Analysis for Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problems , 2006, Transp. Sci..

[25]  Fred W. Glover,et al.  A Template for Scatter Search and Path Relinking , 1997, Artificial Evolution.

[26]  Alain Hertz,et al.  A Tabu Search Algorithm for the Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem , 2003, Transp. Sci..

[27]  Bruce L. Golden,et al.  A comparison of techniques for solving the fleet size and mix vehicle routing problem , 1984 .

[28]  Martin Desrochers,et al.  A new heuristic for the fleet size and mix vehicle routing problem , 1991, Comput. Oper. Res..

[29]  Yves Rochat,et al.  Probabilistic diversification and intensification in local search for vehicle routing , 1995, J. Heuristics.

[30]  Bruce L. Golden,et al.  The fleet size and mix vehicle routing problem , 1984, Comput. Oper. Res..

[31]  Vinícius Amaral Armentano,et al.  Scatter search for project scheduling with resource availability cost , 2006, Eur. J. Oper. Res..