A two-phase solution algorithm for the Flexible Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem

The Flexible Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem is the problem of visiting a given set of customers considering a certain periodicity to attend their demands. It is a generalization of the Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem where the fixed schedule constraint is relaxed and the quantity to deliver to ea...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Archetti, Claudia, Fernández Aréizaga, Elena|||0000-0003-4714-0257, Huerta Muñoz, Diana Lucia|||0000-0002-4818-9311
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/123216
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/123216
https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2018.05.021
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Combinatorial probabilities
Numerical analysis--Simulation methods
Flexible periodic vehicle routing
Matheuristic
Service frequency
Probabilitats
Anàlisi numèrica
Classificació AMS::60 Probability theory and stochastic processes::60C05 Combinatorial probability
Classificació AMS::65 Numerical analysis::65C Probabilistic methods, simulation and stochastic differential equations
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Matemàtiques i estadística::Probabilitat
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Matemàtiques i estadística::Investigació operativa::Programació matemàtica
Descripción
Sumario:The Flexible Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem is the problem of visiting a given set of customers considering a certain periodicity to attend their demands. It is a generalization of the Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem where the fixed schedule constraint is relaxed and the quantity to deliver to each customer at each visit is a decision variable. This flexibility leads to remarkable savings in total costs and this explains the interest in studying the problem and developing effective solution approaches. In this work, an iterative two-phase matheuristic is developed to solve medium and large instances of the problem. Computational tests are made on benchmark instances and on newly generated instances. The results of the matheuristic are compared to the best-known solutions, on small-size instances, and to lower bounds on larger instances. Computational results show that good quality solutions are obtained in a reasonable amount of time.