EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

A shortest path approach to the multiple-vehicle routing problem with split pick-ups

Chi-Guhn Lee, Marina A. Epelman, Chelsea C. White and Yavuz A. Bozer

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2006, vol. 40, issue 4, 265-284

Abstract: We consider a multiple-vehicle routing problem with split pick-ups (mVRPSP). This problem involves multiple suppliers, a single depot, and a fleet of identical capacity trucks responsible for delivering supplies from the suppliers to the depot. Any supplier may be visited by more than one truck, thus allowing split pick-ups. The problem is to determine, for each truck, which suppliers to visit and the size of loads to pick up so as to minimize the total transportation cost for the fleet, which depends on the number of trucks used and their routes. We develop a fundamentally new model for the mVRPSP, a deterministic dynamic program (DP). Although the most natural DP formulation results in a DP with uncountably-infinite state and action spaces, an optimality-invariance condition we establish leads to an equivalent DP with finite state and action spaces. This DP formulation leads to a new exact algorithm for solving the mVRPSP, based on a shortest path search algorithm, which is conceptually simple and easy to implement.

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191-2615(05)00111-6
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transb:v:40:y:2006:i:4:p:265-284

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological is currently edited by Fred Mannering

More articles in Transportation Research Part B: Methodological from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:transb:v:40:y:2006:i:4:p:265-284