Solving the vehicle routing problem with time windows and multiple routes exactly using a pseudo-polynomial model

Rita Macedo (), Cláudio Alves, J.M. Valério de Carvalho, François Clautiaux and Saïd Hanafi

European Journal of Operational Research, 2011, vol. 214, issue 3, 536-545

Abstract: In this paper, we address a variant of the vehicle routing problem called the vehicle routing problem with time windows and multiple routes. It considers that a given vehicle can be assigned to more than one route per planning period. We propose a new exact algorithm for this problem. Our algorithm is iterative and it relies on a pseudo-polynomial network flow model whose nodes represent time instants, and whose arcs represent feasible vehicle routes. This algorithm was tested on a set of benchmark instances from the literature. The computational results show that our method is able to solve more instances than the only other exact method described so far in the literature, and it clearly outperforms this method in terms of computing time.

Keywords: Integer; programming; Combinatorial; optimization; Routing; Network; flows (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:214:y:2011:i:3:p:536-545

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