Minimizing Empty Truck Loads in Round Timber Transport with Tabu Search Strategies

In Central Europe transportation accounts for an estimated 30% of the total costs of round timber and is an essential element of cost. In this paper, Tabu Search based methods for solving the Timber Transport Vehicle Routing Problem (TTVRP) are presented. The TTVRP uses solutions of preceding optimization problems as input that are obtained with standard solver software. The presented methods differ with respect to the considered neighborhood and the static or dynamic setting of their parameters. They are verified with real life data in extensive numerical studies and compared to the results obtained with the solver software Xpress. It is shown that the methods are capable to generate good solutions in reasonable computing time.

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