A Branch-and-Cut method for the Capacitated Location-Routing Problem

International audience; Recent researches in the design of logistic networks have shown that the overall distribution cost may be excessive if routing decisions are ignored when locating depots. The Location-Routing Problem (LRP) overcomes this drawback by simultaneously tackling location and routing decisions. The aim of this paper is to propose an exact approach based on a Branch-and-Cut algorithm for solving the LRP with capacity constraints on depots and vehicles. The proposed method is based on a zero-one linear model strengthened by new families of valid inequalities. The computational evaluation on three sets of instances (34 instances in total), with 5–10 potential depots and 20–88 …