Solving the open vehicle routeing problem via a single parameter metaheuristic algorithm

In this paper, we consider the open vehicle routeing problem (OVRP), in which routes are not sequences of locations starting and ending at the depot but open paths. The problem is of particular importance for planning fleets of hired vehicles, a common practice in the distribution and service industry. In such cases, the travelling cost is a function of the vehicle open paths. To solve the problem, we employ a single-parameter metaheuristic method that exploits a list of threshold values to guide intelligently an advanced local search. Computational results on a set of benchmark problems show that the proposed method consistently outperforms previous approaches for the OVRP. A real-world example demonstrates the applicability of the method in practice, demonstrating that the approach can be used to solve actual problems of routing large vehicle fleets.     

Combination of geographical information system and efficient routing algorithms for real life distribution operations

This paper presents a decision support system (DSS) employing a metaheuristic algorithm called BoneRoute, for solving the open vehicle routing problem (OVRP). The OVRP deals with the problem of finding a set of vehicle routes, for a fleet of capacitated vehicles to satisfy the delivery requirements of customers, without returning to the distribution centre. The computational performance of the BoneRoute algorithm for the OVRP was found to be very efficient, producing new best solutions over a set of well-known published case studies examined. Technical and managerial issues aroused from the ad hoc connections between the geographical information system (GIS), the routing technique used for calculating shortest paths and the BoneRoute algorithm for finding the optimal sequence of customers, were faced successfully.     

A new tabu search heuristic for the open vehicle routing problem

In this paper, another version of the vehicle routing problem (VRP)—the open vehicle routing problem (OVRP) is studied, in which the vehicles are not required to return to the depot, but if they do, it must be by revisiting the customers assigned to them in the reverse order. By exploiting the special structure of this type of problem, we present a new tabu search heuristic for finding the routes that minimize two objectives while satisfying three constraints. The computational results are provided and compared with two other methods in the literature.     

A heuristic method for the open vehicle routing problem

The open vehicle routing problem (OVRP) differs from the classic vehicle routing problem (VRP) because the vehicles either are not required to return to the depot, or they have to return by revisiting the customers assigned to them in the reverse order. Therefore, the vehicle routes are not closed paths but open ones. A heuristic method for solving this new problem, based on a minimum spanning tree with penalties procedure, is presented. Computational results are provided.     

A variable neighbourhood search algorithm for the open vehicle routing problem

In the open vehicle routing problem (OVRP), the objective is to minimise the number of vehicles and then minimise the total distance (or time) travelled. Each route starts at the depot and ends at a customer, visiting a number of customers, each once, en route, without returning to the depot. The demand of each customer must be completely fulfilled by a single vehicle. The total demand serviced by each vehicle must not exceed vehicle capacity. Additionally, in one variant of the problem, the travel time of each vehicle should not exceed an upper limit.     

邮政运输网络中的邮路规划和邮车调度研究

邮政运输网络是邮政企业运营的重要保障,而邮路规划和邮车调度设计是决定邮政运输网络效率的关键因素,问题1的邮路规划问题归结为带返程货的车辆路由问题,该问题是NP-难的,采用改进蚁群算法,通过对单环路旅行商问题进行断环分析,将运行线路的好坏反馈给蚁群算法的目标函数,求取最终的优化路径.第二问邮路规划扩展到了全区,采用有优先级的分县优化途径寻求最佳邮路.最后,给出模型的评价及改进方向.     

面向电商终端物流配送的电动车配置与路径集成优化

在电子商务终端物流配送方面,存在能力与需求的矛盾。一方面,电动车存在货物容量约束和电池电量约束,配送能力有限;另一方面,一个物流配送点需要为众多的消费者进行门到门的配送,配送任务繁重。针对电子商务环境下终端物流配送规模大、电动车货物容量和行驶里程有限的问题,建立电商终端物流配送的电动车配置与路径规划集成优化模型,并提出一种基于临近城市列表的双策略蚁群算法,实现物流配送电动车辆配置与配送路径集成优化。该模型以电动车辆数最少和总路径最短为目标,以电动车货物容量和电池续航里程为约束,是带容量的车辆路径问题的进一步扩展,属于双容量约束路径规划问题。双策略蚁群算法在货物容量和续航里程的约束下,将蚁群搜索策略分为两类,即基于临近城市列表的局部搜索策略和全局搜索策略,在提高搜索效率的同时防止陷入局部优化。最后,通过阿里巴巴旗下菜鸟网络科技有限公司在上海的30组真实配送数据进行了测试,验证双策略蚁群算法显著优于一般蚁群算法。     

A parallel improved ant colony optimization for multi-depot vehicle routing problem

This paper presents a method for solving multi-depot vehicle routing problem (MDVRP). First, a virtual central depot is added to transfer MDVRP to the multi-depot vehicle routing problem with the virtual central depot (V-MDVRP), which is similar to a vehicle routing problem (VRP) with the virtual central depot as the origin. An improved ant colony optimization with coarse-grain parallel strategy, ant-weight strategy and mutation operation, is presented for the V-MDVRP. The computational results for 23 benchmark problems are reported and compared to those of other ant colony optimizations.     

基于交通流的多模糊时间窗车辆路径优化

研究了基于交通流的多模糊时间窗车辆路径问题,考虑了实际中不断变化的交通流以及客户具有多个模糊时间窗的情况,以最小化配送总成本和最大化客户满意度为目标,构建基于交通流的多模糊时间窗车辆路径模型。根据伊藤算法的基本原理,设计了求解该模型的改进伊藤算法,结合仿真算例进行了模拟计算,并与蚁群算法的计算结果进行了对比分析,结果表明,利用改进伊藤算法求解基于交通流的多模糊时间窗车辆路径问题,迭代次数小,效率更高,能够在较短的时间内收敛到全局最优解,可以有效的求解多模糊时间窗车辆路径问题。     

Centralized and distributed cooperative Receding Horizon control of autonomous vehicle missions

We consider a setting where multiple vehicles form a team cooperating to visit multiple target points and collect rewards associated with them. The team objective is to maximize the total reward accumulated over a given time interval. Complicating factors include uncertainties regarding the locations of target points and the effectiveness of collecting rewards, differences among vehicle capabilities, and the fact that rewards are time-varying. We present a Receding Horizon (RH) control scheme which dynamically determines vehicle trajectories by solving a sequence of optimization problems over a planning horizon and executing them over a shorter action horizon. A key property of this scheme is that the trajectories it generates are stationary, in the sense that they ultimately guide vehicles to target points, even though the controller is not designed to perform any discrete point assignments. The proposed scheme is centralized and it induces a cooperative behavior. We subsequently develop a distributed cooperative controller which does not require a vehicle to maintain perfect information on the entire team and whose computational cost is scalable and significantly lower than the centralized case, making it attractive for applications with real-time constraints. We include simulation-based comparisons between the centralized algorithm and the distributed version, which illustrate the effectiveness of the latter.     

A novel ant colony optimization approach for on-line scheduling and due date determination

This paper aims to develop an on-line Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) framework, where jobs arrive over time, and at any time we lack knowledge concerning future jobs. A due date is determined upon job arrival, and jobs are sequenced on the machine to optimize the sum of weighted lead times with all due dates met. We propose that each ant is associated with a sequence of waiting jobs with quoted due dates. This waiting sequence is constantly updated over time (whenever a job is selected to be processed or a new job arrives). The on-line schedule is constructed by selecting the first job in the waiting list of the “best” ant to process (along with its due date) as the machine becomes available. However, for the ant where this job is not the first one in the list, processing it pushes back the waiting jobs positioned before it. If such push back results in a due date violation, this ant will be eliminated. Further, our ACO framework does not include the iterative procedure due to the characteristics of the on-line problem; this is one difference from the traditional ACO framework besides ant elimination. The computational testing on generated instances shows that our ACO algorithm outperforms an existing effective on-line algorithm in the literature. Also, with local search incorporated using the EDD (Earliest Due Date) rule, improvements can be obtained in both computational outcome and time.     

改进蚁群算法在应急VRP问题中的应用研究

提出一种改进的蚁群算法优化应急物流配送车辆路径问题算法,设计了应急物流配送车辆路径问题的数学模型,并利用计算机进行了仿真实验.实验结果表明,方法能有效解决应急物流配送车辆路径问题,具有一定的理论价值和实际意义.     

An Ant Colony Algorithm for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) requires the determination of an optimal set of routes for a set of vehicles to serve a set of customers. We deal here with the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) where there is a maximum weight or volume that each vehicle can load. We developed an Ant Colony algorithm (ACO) for the CVRP based on the metaheuristic technique introduced by Colorni, Dorigo and Maniezzo. We present preliminary results that show that ant algorithms are competitive with other metaheuristics for solving CVRP.     

战时备件配送的MDVRPTW问题研究

战时备件配送的车辆调度是提高装备保障效率的关键因素.以装备效能损失最小化为车辆调度的目标,建立了问题的M DVRPTW模型,并应用蚁群算法对问题进行了求解.算法中,根据问题特征改进了状态转移规则,设计了串行和并行两种路线构造方法,并应用局部搜索模块对蚂蚁构造的路线进行改进.对算例的计算实验表明,串行路线构造方法在精度和速度两方面均优于并行路线构造方法.     

Vehicle routing with multiple deliverymen: Modeling and heuristic approaches for the VRPTW

In real life distribution of goods, relatively long service times may make it difficult to serve all requests during regular working hours. These difficulties are even greater if the beginning of the service in each demand site must occur within a time window and violations of routing time restrictions are particularly undesirable. We address this situation by considering a variant of the vehicle routing problem with time windows for which, besides routing and scheduling decisions, a number of extra deliverymen can be assigned to each route in order to reduce service times. This problem appears, for example, in the distribution of beverage and tobacco in highly dense Brazilian urban areas. We present a mathematical programming formulation for the problem, as well as a tabu search and an ant colony optimization heuristics for obtaining minimum cost routes. The performance of the model and the heuristic approaches are evaluated using instances generated from a set of classic examples from the literature.     

新能源移动充电车路径优化问题研究

在绿色城市背景下,新能源汽车的数量快速增长,现有公共充电设施的不完善使得移动充电服务应运而生。投入运营成本较高而利润低成为阻碍移动充电业务运营的瓶颈之一,如何通过科学合理的调度提高平台利润成为重要问题。本文研究了移动充电车队的调度和路径优化问题,以平台最大收益为目标,综合考虑顾客软时间窗、移动电池容量以及充电车续航里程等约束,建立数学规划模型;设计了一种最大最小蚁群算法,并通过数值实验验证了模型的合理性和算法的有效性,为移动充电企业运营提供决策参考。     

Single vehicle routing problems with a predefined customer sequence, compartmentalized load and stochastic demands

We consider the problem of finding the optimal routing of a single vehicle that delivers K different products to N customers according to a particular customer order. The demands of the customers for each product are assumed to be random variables with known distributions. Each product type is stored in its dedicated compartment in the vehicle. Using a suitable dynamic programming algorithm we find the policy that satisfies the demands of the customers with the minimum total expected cost. We also prove that this policy has a specific threshold-type structure. Furthermore, we investigate a corresponding infinite-time horizon problem in which the service of the customers does not stop when the last customer has been serviced but it continues indefinitely with the same customer order. It is assumed that the demands of the customers at different tours have the same distributions. It is shown that the discounted-cost optimal policy and the average-cost optimal policy have the same threshold-type structure as the optimal policy in the original problem. The theoretical results are illustrated by numerical examples.     

A solution approach for dynamic vehicle and crew scheduling

In this paper, we discuss the dynamic vehicle and crew scheduling problem and we propose a solution approach consisting of solving a sequence of optimization problems. Furthermore, we explain why it is useful to consider such a dynamic approach and compare it with a static one. Moreover, we perform a sensitivity analysis on our main assumption that the travel times of the trips are known exactly a certain amount of time before actual operation.We provide extensive computational results on some real-world data instances of a large public transport company in the Netherlands. Due to the complexity of the vehicle and crew scheduling problem, we solve only small and medium-sized instances with such a dynamic approach. We show that the results are good in the case of a single depot. However, in the multiple-depot case, the dynamic approach does not perform so well. We investigate why this is the case and conclude that the fact that the instance has to be split in several smaller ones, has a negative effect on the performance.     

An Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for Shop Scheduling Problems

We deal with the application of ant colony optimization to group shop scheduling, which is a general shop scheduling problem that includes, among others, the open shop scheduling problem and the job shop scheduling problem as special cases. The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we propose a neighborhood structure for this problem by extending the well-known neighborhood structure derived by Nowicki and Smutnicki for the job shop scheduling problem. Then, we develop an ant colony optimization approach, which uses a strong non-delay guidance for constructing solutions and which employs black-box local search procedures to improve the constructed solutions. We compare this algorithm to an adaptation of the tabu search by Nowicki and Smutnicki to group shop scheduling. Despite its general nature, our algorithm works particularly well when applied to open shop scheduling instances, where it improves the best known solutions for 15 of the 28 tested instances. Moreover, our algorithm is the first competitive ant colony optimization approach for job shop scheduling instances.     

A perturbation metaheuristic for the vehicle routing problem with private fleet and common carriers

The purpose of this article is to propose a perturbation metaheuristic for the vehicle routing problem with private fleet and common carrier (VRPPC). This problem consists of serving all customers in such a way that (1) each customer is served exactly once either by a private fleet vehicle or by a common carrier vehicle, (2) all routes associated with the private fleet start and end at the depot, (3) each private fleet vehicle performs only one route, (4) the total demand of any route does not exceed the capacity of the vehicle assigned to it, and (5) the total cost is minimized. This article describes a new metaheuristic for the VRPPC, which uses a perturbation procedure in the construction and improvement phases and also performs exchanges between the sets of customers served by the private fleet and the common carrier. Extensive computational results show the superiority of the proposed metaheuristic over previous methods.