In this paper we consider the operational planning problem of physical distribution via a fleet of hired vehicles, for which the travelling cost is solely a function of the sequence of locations visited within all open delivery routes, while vehicle fixed cost is inexistent. The problem is a special class of vehicle routing and is encountered in the literature as the Open Vehicle Routing Problem (OVRP), since vehicles are not required to return to the depot. The goal is to distribute in an optimal way finished goods from a central facility to geographically dispersed customers, which pose daily demand for items produced in the facility and act as sales points for consumers. To solve the problem, we employ an annealing-based method that utilizes a backtracking policy of the threshold value when no acceptances of feasible solutions occur during the search process. Computational results on a set of benchmark problems show that the proposed method consistently outperforms previous algorithms for solving the OVRP. The approach can serve as the means for effective fleet planning in real-life problems.
@article{RO_2004__38_4_345_0, author = {Tarantilis, Christos D. and Ioannou, George and Kiranoudis, Chris T. and Prastacos, Gregory P.}, title = {A threshold accepting approach to the open vehicle routing problem}, journal = {RAIRO - Operations Research - Recherche Op\'erationnelle}, pages = {345--360}, publisher = {EDP-Sciences}, volume = {38}, number = {4}, year = {2004}, doi = {10.1051/ro:2004029}, mrnumber = {2178085}, zbl = {1114.90063}, language = {en}, url = {http://archive.numdam.org/articles/10.1051/ro:2004029/} }
TY - JOUR AU - Tarantilis, Christos D. AU - Ioannou, George AU - Kiranoudis, Chris T. AU - Prastacos, Gregory P. TI - A threshold accepting approach to the open vehicle routing problem JO - RAIRO - Operations Research - Recherche Opérationnelle PY - 2004 SP - 345 EP - 360 VL - 38 IS - 4 PB - EDP-Sciences UR - http://archive.numdam.org/articles/10.1051/ro:2004029/ DO - 10.1051/ro:2004029 LA - en ID - RO_2004__38_4_345_0 ER -
%0 Journal Article %A Tarantilis, Christos D. %A Ioannou, George %A Kiranoudis, Chris T. %A Prastacos, Gregory P. %T A threshold accepting approach to the open vehicle routing problem %J RAIRO - Operations Research - Recherche Opérationnelle %D 2004 %P 345-360 %V 38 %N 4 %I EDP-Sciences %U http://archive.numdam.org/articles/10.1051/ro:2004029/ %R 10.1051/ro:2004029 %G en %F RO_2004__38_4_345_0
Tarantilis, Christos D.; Ioannou, George; Kiranoudis, Chris T.; Prastacos, Gregory P. A threshold accepting approach to the open vehicle routing problem. RAIRO - Operations Research - Recherche Opérationnelle, Volume 38 (2004) no. 4, pp. 345-360. doi : 10.1051/ro:2004029. http://archive.numdam.org/articles/10.1051/ro:2004029/
[1] Routing and scheduling of vehicles and crews: the state of the art. Comput. Oper. Res. 10 (1983) 63-211.
, , and ,[2] A tabu search algorithm for the Open Vehicle Routing Problem. Eur. J. Oper. Res. 157 (2004) 552-564. | Zbl
,[3] A threshold accepting metaheuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows. Central Eur. J. Oper. Res. 11 (2003) 369-387. | Zbl
, , and ,[4] The vehicle routing problem, in Combinatorial Optimization, edited by N. Christofides, A. Mingozzi, P. Toth and C. Sandi. Wiley, Chichester (1979) 315-338. | Zbl
, and ,[5] Scheduling of vehicles from a central depot to a number of delivery points. Oper. Res. 12 (1964) 568-589.
and ,[6] New Heuristics for the Vehicle Routing Problem, in Logistics Systems: Design and Optimization, edited by A. Langevin et D. Riopel. Kluwer (to appear). | Zbl
, , , and ,[7] A guide to vehicle routing heuristics. J. Oper. Res. Soc. 53 (2002) 512-522. | Zbl
, , , and ,[8] A method for solving traveling salesman problems. Oper. Res. 6 (1958) 791-812.
,[9] Threshold accepting: a general purpose algorithm appearing superior to simulated annealing. J. Comput. Phys. 90 (1990) 161-175. | Zbl
and ,[10] A tabu search heuristic for the vehicle routing problem. Manage. Sci. 40 (1994) 1276-1290. | Zbl
, and ,[11] New insertion and postoptimization procedures for the traveling salesman problem. Oper. Res. 40 (1992) 1086-1094. | Zbl
, and ,[12] The impact of metaheuristics on solving the vehicle routing problem: Algorithms, problem sets, and computational results, edited by T.G. Crainic and G. Laporte. Fleet Management and Logistics, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston (1998) 33-56. | Zbl
, , and ,[13] Vehicle Routing: Methods and Studies. Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam (1988). | MR | Zbl
and ,[14] Optimization by simulated annealing. Science 220 (1983) 671-680.
, and ,[15] A heuristic method for the open vehicle routing problem. J. Oper. Res. Soc. 51 (2000) 564-573. | Zbl
and ,[16] Discrete Optimization Algoritms with Pascal Programs. Prentice Hall, Inc. (1983). | Zbl
, and ,[17] A list based threshold accepting metaheuristic for the heterogeneous fixed fleet vehicle routing problem. J. Oper. Res. Soc. 54 (2003) 65-71. | Zbl
, and ,[18] BoneRoute: An adaptive memory-based method for effective fleet management. Ann. Oper. Res. 115 (2002) 227-241. | Zbl
and ,[19] A solution procedure for the vehicle scheduling problem based on iterative route improvement. J. Oper. Res. Soc. 38 (1987) 833-839. | Zbl
,Cited by Sources: