Evaluating a Modified Heuristic for the Multiple-Vehicle Scheduling Problem

Abstract This paper outlines a modified heuristic procedure for solving the multiple vehicle scheduling problem. The solution method alternates between a time saved heuristic and Little's Sequential Tour Building method [12]. The major impact of the heuristic procedure breaks the problem into feasible tours solving each of the tours with an optimizing procedure. To demonstrate how the modified heuristic works, a state wide bakery example was used. A comparison of the modified heuristic and two well known routing heuristics resulted in the selection of the modified heuristic as the method of choice. Given these preliminary results, a more complete testing of the heuristic and the well known Clark and Wright heuristic was performed. In this formal experiment both methods were modified to achieve route balance. The results indicated that the modified routing method showed an overall average improvement over the Clark and Wright heuristic. The results also showed a significant trade off between the number of ...