A branch-and-price algorithm for the scheduling of customer visits in the context of multi-period service territory design

Matthias Bender, Jörg Kalcsics, Stefan Nickel and Martin Pouls

European Journal of Operational Research, 2018, vol. 269, issue 1, 382-396

Abstract: A problem that arises in the context of multi-period service territory design is the scheduling of customer visits. In this problem, customer visits must be assigned to the days of the planning horizon subject to customer-specific requirements. We consider a highly relevant planning scenario of this problem and present an exact branch-and-price algorithm. We propose specialized acceleration techniques, particularly a fast pricing heuristic and techniques to reduce the symmetry inherent to the problem. Experiments on real-world data sets show that instances with up to 55 customers and a planning horizon of four weeks with five days per week can be solved to optimality in reasonable running times.

Keywords: Transportation; Multi-period service territory design; Scheduling of customer visits; Branch-and-price; Acceleration techniques (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:269:y:2018:i:1:p:382-396

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2018.01.047

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