0000000000072777
AUTHOR
Michael Drexl
Synchronization in Vehicle Routing—A Survey of VRPs with Multiple Synchronization Constraints
This paper presents a survey of vehicle routing problems with multiple synchronization constraints. These problems exhibit, in addition to the usual task covering constraints, further synchronization requirements between the vehicles, concerning spatial, temporal, and load aspects. They constitute an emerging field in vehicle routing research and are becoming a “hot” topic. The contribution of the paper is threefold: (i) It presents a classification of different types of synchronization. (ii) It discusses the central issues related to the exact and heuristic solution of such problems. (iii) It comprehensively reviews pertinent literature with respect to applications as well as successful s…
Branch-and-price-and-cut for a service network design and hub location problem
In the context of combined road-rail freight transport, we study the integrated tactical planning of hub locations and the design of a frequency service network. We consider a number of real-world constraints such as multiple transshipments of requests at hubs, transport time limits for requests, request splitting, and outsourcing possibilities. To our knowledge, the combination of problem features we deal with has not been described before. We present a path-based model and solve it with a branch-and-price-and-cut algorithm. Computational experiments show that large realistic instances from a major German rail freight company can be solved close to optimality within one hour on a standard …
The Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows and Customer Inconvenience Constraints
In classical routing problems, each customer is visited exactly once. By contrast, when allowing split deliveries, customers may be served through multiple visits. This potentially results in substantial savings in travel costs. Even if split deliveries are beneficial to the transport company, several visits may be undesirable on the customer side: At each visit the customer has to interrupt his primary activities and handle the goods receipt. The contribution of the present paper consists in a thorough analysis of the possibilities and limitations of split delivery distribution strategies. To this end, we investigate two different types of measures for limiting customer inconvenience (a m…
Nested branch-and-price-and-cut for vehicle routing problems with multiple resource interdependencies
Abstract This paper considers vehicle routing problems (VRPs) with multiple resource interdependencies and addresses the development and computational evaluation of an exact branch-and-price-and-cut algorithm for their solution. An interdependency between two resources means that the two resource consumptions influence one another in such a way that a tradeoff exists between them. This impacts the feasibility and/or the cost of a solution. The subproblem in branch-and-price-and-cut procedures for VRPs is very often a variant of the shortest-path problem with resource constraints (SPPRC). For the exact solution of many SPPRC variants, dynamic-programming based labeling algorithms are predomi…
On the generalized directed rural postman problem
The generalized directed rural postman problem (GDRPP) is a generic type of arc routing problem. In the present paper, it is described how many types of practically relevant single-vehicle routing problems can be modelled as GDRPPs. This demonstrates the versatility of the GDRPP and its importance as a unified model for postman problems. In addition, an exact and a heuristic solution method are presented. Computational experiments using two large sets of benchmark instances are performed. The results show high solution quality and thus demonstrate the practical usefulness of the approach.
Branch-and-cut algorithms for the vehicle routing problem with trailers and transshipments
This article studies the vehicle routing problem with trailers and transshipments VRPTT, a practically relevant, but challenging, generalization of the classical vehicle routing problem. The article makes three contributions: i Building on a nontrivial network representation, two mixed-integer programming formulations for the VRPTT are proposed. ii Based on these formulations, five different branch-and-cut algorithms are developed and implemented. iii The computational behavior of the algorithms is analyzed in an extensive computational study, using a large number of test instances designed to resemble real-world VRPTTs.Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 631, 119-133 20…
Applications of the vehicle routing problem with trailers and transshipments
Abstract The vehicle routing problem with trailers and transshipments (VRPTT) is a recent and challenging extension of the well-known vehicle routing problem. The VRPTT constitutes an archetypal representative of the class of vehicle routing problems with multiple synchronization constraints (VRPMSs). In addition to the usual task covering constraints, VRPMSs require further synchronization between vehicles, concerning spatial, temporal, and load aspects. VRPMSs possess considerable practical relevance, but limited coverage in the scientific literature. The purpose of the present paper is to describe how several important types of VRPMSs, such as multi-echelon location-routing problems and …
Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search with a Constant-Time Feasibility Test for the Dial-a-Ride Problem
In the dial-a-ride problem, user-specified transport requests from origin to destination points have to be served by a fleet of homogeneous vehicles. The problem variant we consider aims at finding a set of minimum-cost routes satisfying constraints on vehicle capacity, time windows, maximum route duration, and maximum user ride times. We propose an adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) for its solution. The key novelty of the approach is an exact amortized constant-time algorithm for evaluating the feasibility of request insertions in the repair steps of the ALNS. In addition, we use two optional improvement techniques: a local-search-based intraroute improvement of routes of promisin…
A note on the separation of subtour elimination constraints in elementary shortest path problems
Abstract This note proposes an alternative procedure for identifying violated subtour elimination constraints (SECs) in branch-and-cut algorithms for elementary shortest path problems. The procedure is also applicable to other routing problems, such as variants of travelling salesman or shortest Hamiltonian path problems, on directed graphs. The proposed procedure is based on computing the strong components of the support graph. The procedure possesses a better worst-case time complexity than the standard way of separating SECs, which uses maximum flow algorithms, and is easier to implement.
Simultaneous Vehicle and Crew Routing and Scheduling for Partial- and Full-Load Long-Distance Road Transport
AbstractThis paper studies a simultaneous vehicle and crew routing and scheduling problem arising in long-distance road transport in Europe: Pickup-and-delivery requests have to be fulfilled over a multi-period planning horizon by a heterogeneous fleet of trucks and drivers. Typically, in the vehicle routing literature, a fixed assignment of a driver to a truck is assumed. In our approach, we abandon this assumption and allow truck/driver changes at geographically dispersed relay stations. This offers greater planning flexibility and allows a better utilization of trucks, but also creates intricate interdependencies between trucks and drivers and requires the synchronization of their routes…
Branch-and-Price-and-Cut for the Truck-and-Trailer Routing Problem with Time Windows
In this paper, we present a new branch-and-price-and-cut algorithm to solve the truck-and-trailer routing problem with time windows (TTRPTW) and two real-world extensions. In all TTRPTW variants, the fleet consists of one or more trucks that may attach a trailer. Some customers are not accessible with a truck-and-trailer combination, but can however be serviced by one if the trailer is previously detached and parked at a suitable location. In the first extension, the planning horizon comprises two days and customers may be visited either on both days or only once, in which case twice the daily supply must be collected. The second extension incorporates load transfer times depending on the …
Branch-and-Price-and-Cut for the Active-Passive Vehicle-Routing Problem
This paper presents a branch-and-price-and-cut algorithm for the exact solution of the active-passive vehicle-routing problem (APVRP). The APVRP covers a range of logistics applications where pickup-and-delivery requests necessitate a joint operation of active vehicles (e.g., trucks) and passive vehicles (e.g., loading devices such as containers or swap bodies). The objective is to minimize a weighted sum of the total distance traveled, the total completion time of the routes, and the number of unserved requests. To this end, the problem supports a flexible coupling and decoupling of active and passive vehicles at customer locations. Accordingly, the operations of the vehicles have to be s…
A survey of variants and extensions of the location-routing problem
This is a review of the literature on variants and extensions of the standard location-routing problem published since the last survey, by Nagy and Salhi, appeared in 2006. We propose a classification of problem variants, provide concise paper excerpts that convey the central ideas of each work, discuss recent developments in the field, and list promising topics for further research.