An adaptive memory methodology for the vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pick-ups and deliveries

This paper deals with a routing problem variant which considers customers to simultaneously require delivery and pick-up services. The examined problem is referred to as the Vehicle Routing Problem with Simultaneous Pick-ups and Deliveries (VRPSPD). VRPSPD is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem, practical large-scale instances of which cannot be solved by exact solution methodologies within acceptable computational times. Our interest was therefore focused on metaheuristic solution approaches. In specific, we introduce an Adaptive Memory (AM) algorithmic framework which collects and combines promising solution features to generate high-quality solutions. The proposed strategy employs an innovative memory mechanism to systematically maximize the amount of routing information extracted from the AM, in order to drive the search towards diverse regions of the solution space. Our metaheuristic development was tested on numerous VRPSPD instances involving from 50 to 400 customers. It proved to be rather effective and efficient, as it produced high-quality solutions, requiring limited computational effort. Furthermore, it managed to produce several new best solutions.     

Optimizing garbage collection vehicle routing problem with alternative fuel-powered vehicles

Abstract

This paper considers the garbage collection problem in which vehicles with multiple compartments are used to collect the garbage. The vehicles are considered to be Alternative Fuel-powered Vehicles (AFVs). Compared with the traditional fossil fuel powered vehicles, the AFVs have limited fuel tank capacity. In addition, AFVs are allowed to refuel only at the depot. We provide a mathematical formulation and develop two solution approaches to solve the problem. The first approach is based on the saving algorithm, while the second is based on the ant colony system (ACS) metaheuristic. New problem instances have been generated to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms.     

An evolutionary approach for bandwidth multicoloring problems

In this paper we consider some generalizations of the vertex coloring problem, where distance constraints are imposed between adjacent vertices (bandwidth coloring problem) and each vertex has to be colored with more than one color (bandwidth multicoloring problem). We propose an evolutionary metaheuristic approach for the first problem, combining an effective tabu search algorithm with population management procedures. The approach can be applied to the second problem as well, after a simple transformation. Computational results on instances from the literature show that the overall algorithm is able to produce high quality solutions in a reasonable amount of time, outperforming the most effective algorithms proposed for the bandwidth coloring problem, and improving the best known solution of many instances of the bandwidth multicoloring problem.     

A branch-and-price algorithm to solve the integrated berth allocation and yard assignment problem in bulk ports

In this research, two crucial optimization problems of berth allocation and yard assignment in the context of bulk ports are studied. We discuss how these problems are interrelated and can be combined and solved as a single large scale optimization problem. More importantly we highlight the differences in operations between bulk ports and container terminals which highlights the need to devise specific solutions for bulk ports. The objective is to minimize the total service time of vessels berthing at the port. We propose an exact solution algorithm based on a branch and price framework to solve the integrated problem. In the proposed model, the master problem is formulated as a set-partitioning problem, and subproblems to identify columns with negative reduced costs are solved using mixed integer programming. To obtain sub-optimal solutions quickly, a metaheuristic approach based on critical-shaking neighborhood search is presented. The proposed algorithms are tested and validated through numerical experiments based on instances inspired from real bulk port data. The results indicate that the algorithms can be successfully used to solve instances containing up to 40 vessels within reasonable computational time.     

An optimization model for combined selecting,planting and harvesting sugarcane varieties

The problem of selecting sugarcane varieties has been widely discussed due to its computational complexity and its great impact for the sugar and ethanol industry. This paper proposes a new integrated mathematical programming model to deal with the selection of sugarcane varieties to be planted and the determination of the optimal period for planting and harvesting in order to increase production in the sugarcane industry. The proposed model optimizes the production of sugarcane and improves the quality of biomass whilst satisfying the main constraints imposed by sugarcane companies. The problem is modelled as an integer linear program and solved using an exact method to generate optimal solutions for small and medium problems. For large problems, metaheuristic approaches based on Genetic Algorithm and Variable Neighbourhood Search are proposed. According to the results, the proposed methodology provides sugarcane company managers with decision support in selecting the most suitable varieties and in determining the best period to plant and harvest their sugarcane.

     

A customer-centric routing problem with multiple trips of a single vehicle

In this study, we introduce a routing problem with multiple uses of a single vehicle and service time in demand points, minimizing the sum of clients’ waiting time to receive service. This problem is relevant in the distribution of aid in disaster-stricken communities, in the recollection and/or delivery of perishable goods and personnel transportation, among other situations, where reaching clients to perform service, fast and fair, is a priority. We consider vehicle capacity and travel distance constraints, forcing multiple use of the vehicle during the planning horizon. This paper presents two mixed integer formulations for this problem, based on a multi-level network, as well as a metaheuristic algorithm. The proposed models can solve to optimality instances with up to 30 clients. The proposed metaheuristic algorithm obtains high-quality solutions in short computational times.     

Hybrid Metaheuristics for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands

This article analyzes the performance of metaheuristics on the vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands (VRPSD). The problem is known to have a computationally demanding objective function, which could turn to be infeasible when large instances are considered. Fast approximations of the objective function are therefore appealing because they would allow for an extended exploration of the search space. We explore the hybridization of the metaheuristic by means of two objective functions which are surrogate measures of the exact solution quality. Particularly helpful for some metaheuristics is the objective function derived from the traveling salesman problem (TSP), a closely related problem. In the light of this observation, we analyze possible extensions of the metaheuristics which take the hybridized solution approach VRPSD-TSP even further and report about experimental results on different types of instances. We show that, for the instances tested, two hybridized versions of iterated local search and evolutionary algorithm attain better solutions than state-of-the-art algorithms.     

An effective greedy heuristic for the Social Golfer Problem

The Social Golfer Problem (SGP) is a combinatorial optimization problem that exhibits a lot of symmetry and has recently attracted significant attention. In this paper, we present a new greedy heuristic for the SGP, based on the intuitive concept of freedom among players. We use this heuristic in a complete backtracking search, and match the best current results of constraint solvers for several SGP instances with a much simpler method. We then use the main idea of the heuristic to construct initial configurations for a metaheuristic approach, and show that this significantly improves results obtained by local search alone. In particular, our method is the first metaheuristic technique that can solve the original problem instance optimally. We show that our approach is also highly competitive with other metaheuristic and constraint-based methods on many other benchmark instances from the literature.     

A mixed integer formulation and an efficient metaheuristic procedure for the <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-Travelling Repairmen Problem

In this paper, we study a k-Travelling Repairmen Problem where the objective is to minimize the sum of clients waiting time to receive service. This problem is relevant in applications that involve distribution of humanitarian aid in disaster areas, delivery and collection of perishable products and personnel transportation, where reaching demand points to perform service, fast and fair, is a priority. This paper presents a new mixed integer formulation and a simple and efficient metaheuristic algorithm. The proposed formulation consumes less computational time and allows solving to optimality more than three times larger data instances than the previous formulation published in literature, even outperforming a recently published Branch and Price and Cut algorithm for this problem. The proposed metaheuristic algorithm solved to optimality 386 out of 389 tested instances in a very short computational time. For larger instances, the algorithm was assessed using the best results reported in the literature for the Cumulative Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem.     

A time-based pheromone approach for the ant system

The ant system (AS) is a metaheuristic approach originally developed for solving the traveling salesman problem. AS has been successfully applied to various hard combinatorial optimization problems and different variants have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we introduce a time-based pheromone approach for AS (TbAS). Due to this nature TbAS is applicable to routing problems involving time-windows. The novelty in TbAS is the multi-layer pheromone network structure which implicitly utilizes the service time information associated with the customers as a heuristic information. To investigate the performance of TbAS, we use the well-known vehicle routing problem with time-windows as our testbed and we conduct an extensive computational study using the Solomon (Algorithms for the vehicle routing and scheduling problems with time window constraints 35:254?C265, 1987) instances. Our results reveal that the proposed time-based pheromone approach is effective in obtaining good quality solutions.     

Parallel Metaheuristics for Workforce Planning

Workforce planning is an important activity that enables organizations to determine the workforce needed for continued success. A workforce planning problem is a very complex task requiring modern techniques to be solved adequately. In this work, we describe the development of three parallel metaheuristic methods, a parallel genetic algorithm, a parallel scatter search, and a parallel hybrid genetic algorithm, which can find high-quality solutions to 20 different problem instances. Our experiments show that parallel versions do not only allow to reduce the execution time but they also improve the solution quality.      

An integer optimization approach for reverse engineering of gene regulatory networks

Gene regulatory networks are a common tool to describe the chemical interactions between genes in a living cell. This paper considers the Weighted Gene Regulatory Network (WGRN) problem, which consists in identifying a reduced set of interesting candidate regulatory elements which can explain the expression of all other genes. We provide an integer programming formulation based on a graph model and derive from it a branch-and-bound algorithm which exploits the Lagrangian relaxation of suitable constraints. This allows to determine lower bounds tighter than CPLEX on most benchmark instances, with the exception of the sparser ones. In order to determine feasible solutions for the problem, which appears to be a hard task for general-purpose solvers, we also develop and compare two metaheuristic approaches, namely a Tabu Search and a Variable Neighborhood Search algorithm. The experiments performed on both of them suggest that diversification is a key feature to solve the problem.     

Metaheuristic algorithms hybridised with variable neighbourhood search for solving the response time variability problem

The response time variability problem (RTVP) is a scheduling problem with a wide range of real-world applications: mixed-model assembly lines, multi-threaded computer systems, network environments, broadcast of commercial videotapes and machine maintenance, among others. The RTVP arises whenever products, clients or jobs need to be sequenced in such a way that the variability in the time between the points at which they receive the necessary resources is minimised. Since the RTVP is NP-hard, several heuristic and metaheuristic techniques are needed to solve non-small instances. The published metaheuristic procedure that obtained the best solutions, on average, for non-small RTVP instances is an algorithm based on a variant of the variable neighbourhood search (VNS), called Reduced VNS (RVNS). We propose hybridising RVNS with three existing algorithms based on tabu search, multi-start and particle swarm optimisation. The aim is to combine the strengths of the metaheuristics. A computational experiment is carried out and it is shown that, on average, all proposed hybrid methods are able to improve the best published solutions.     

Multiobjective scatter search for a commercial territory design problem

In this paper, a multiobjective scatter search procedure for a bi-objective territory design problem is proposed. A?territory design problem consists of partitioning a set of basic units into larger groups that are suitable with respect to some specific planning criteria. These groups must be compact, connected, and balanced with respect to the number of customers and sales volume. The bi-objective commercial territory design problem belongs to the class of NP-hard problems. Previous work showed that large instances of the problem addressed in this work are practically intractable even for the single-objective version. Therefore, the use of heuristic methods is the best alternative for obtaining approximate efficient solutions for relatively large instances. The proposed scatter search-based framework contains a diversification generation module based on a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure, an improvement module based on a relinked local search strategy, and a combination module based on a solution to an assignment problem. The proposed metaheuristic is evaluated over a variety of instances taken from literature. This includes a comparison with two of the most successful multiobjective heuristics from literature such as the Scatter Tabu Search Procedure for Multiobjective Optimization (SSPMO) by Molina et al. (INFORMS J. Comput. 19(1):91?C100, 2007), and the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) by Deb et?al. (Parallel problem solving from nature ?C PPSN VI, Lecture notes in computer science, vol. 1917, Springer, Berlin, pp.?849?C858, 2000). Experimental work reveals that the proposed procedure consistently outperforms both heuristics, SSPMO and NSGA-II, on all instances tested.     

A metaheuristic for the min–max windy rural postman problem with K vehicles

In this paper we deal with the min–max version of the windy rural postman problem with K vehicles. For this problem, in which the objective is to minimize the length of the longest tour in order to find a set of balanced tours for the vehicles, we present here a metaheuristic that produces very good feasible solutions in reasonable computing times. It is based on the combination of a multi-start procedure with an Iterated Local Search. Extensive computational results on a large set of instances with up to 50 vertices, 184 edges and 5 vehicles are presented. The results are very good, the average gaps with respect to a known lower bound are less than 0.40% for instances with 2 or 3 vehicles and up to 1.60% when 4 or 5 vehicles are considered.     

A Guided Tabu Search for the Vehicle Routing Problem with two-dimensional loading constraints

We present a metaheuristic methodology for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with two-dimensional loading constraints (2L-CVRP). 2L-CVRP is a generalisation of the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem, in which customer demand is formed by a set of two-dimensional, rectangular, weighted items. The purpose of this problem is to produce the minimum cost routes, starting and terminating at a central depot, to satisfy the customer demand. Furthermore, the transported items must be feasibly packed into the loading surfaces of the vehicles. We propose a metaheuristic algorithm which incorporates the rationale of Tabu Search and Guided Local Search. The loading aspects of the problem are tackled using a collection of packing heuristics. To accelerate the search process, we reduce the neighbourhoods explored, and employ a memory structure to record the loading feasibility information. Extensive experiments were conducted to calibrate the algorithmic parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed metaheuristic algorithm was tested on benchmark instances and led to several new best solutions.     

Memetic algorithm for the Traveling Car Renter Problem: an experimental investigation

The Traveling Car Renter Problem (CaRS) is a generalization of the Traveling Salesman Problem where the tour can be decomposed into contiguous paths that are travelled by different rented cars. When a car is rented in a city and delivered in another, the renter must pay a fee to return the car to its home city. Given a graph G and cost matrices associated to cars available for rent, the problem consists in determining the minimum cost Hamiltonian cycle in G, considering also the cost paid to deliver a car in a city different from the one it was rented. The latter cost is added to the cost of the edges in the cycle. This paper describes the general problem and some related variants. Two metaheuristic approaches are proposed to deal with CaRS: GRASP hybridized with Variable Neighborhood Descent and Memetic Algorithm. A set of benchmark instances is proposed for the new problem which is utilized on the computational experiments. The algorithms are tested on a set of 40 Euclidean and non-Euclidean instances.     

Hybrid multi-objective Bayesian estimation of distribution algorithm: a comparative analysis for the multi-objective knapsack problem

Nowadays, a number of metaheuristics have been developed for efficiently solving multi-objective optimization problems. Estimation of distribution algorithms are a special class of metaheuristic that intensively apply probabilistic modeling and, as well as local search methods, are widely used to make the search more efficient. In this paper, we apply a Hybrid Multi-objective Bayesian Estimation of Distribution Algorithm (HMOBEDA) in multi and many objective scenarios by modeling the joint probability of decision variables, objectives, and the configuration parameters of an embedded local search (LS). We analyze the benefits of the online configuration of LS parameters by comparing the proposed approach with LS off-line versions using instances of the multi-objective knapsack problem with two to five and eight objectives. HMOBEDA is also compared with five advanced evolutionary methods using the same instances. Results show that HMOBEDA outperforms the other approaches including those with off-line configuration. HMOBEDA not only provides the best value for hypervolume indicator and IGD metric in most of the cases, but it also computes a very diverse solutions set close to the estimated Pareto front.     

Hashing vectors for tabu search

Tabu search as proposed by Glover [3,4] has proven to be a very effective metaheuristic for hard problems. In this paper we propose that hash functions be used to record the solutions encountered during recent iterations of the search in a long list. Hash values of potential solutions can be compared to the values on the list for the purpose of avoiding cycling. This frees the algorithm designer of the need to consider cycling when creating tabu restrictions based on move attributes. We suggest specific functions that result in very good performance.     

A mathematical formulation and complexity considerations for the blocks relocation problem

The blocks relocation problem (BRP) may be defined as follows: given a set of homogeneous blocks stored in a two-dimensional stock, which relocations are necessary to retrieve the blocks from the stock in a predefined order while minimizing the number of those relocations? In this paper, we first prove NP-hardness of the BRP as well as a special case, closing open research questions. Moreover, we propose different solution approaches. First, a mathematical model is presented that provides optimal solutions to the general BRP in cases where instances are small. To overcome such limitation, some realistic assumption taken from the literature is introduced, leading to the definition of a binary linear programming model. In terms of computational time, this approach is reasonably fast to be used to solve medium-sized instances. In addition, we propose a simple heuristic based upon a set of relocation rules. This heuristic is used to generate “good” quality solutions for larger instances in very short computational time, and, consequently, is proposed for tackling problem instances where solutions are required (almost) immediately. Solution quality of the heuristic is measured against optimal solutions obtained using a state-of-the-art commercial solver and both of them are compared with reference results from literature.