Simulated Annealing with Restart Strategy for the Path Cover Problem with Time Windows

Vincent F. Yu, Winarno, Achmad Maulidin, A. A. N. Perwira Redi, Shih-Wei Lin and Chao-Lung Yang
Additional contact information
Vincent F. Yu: Department of Industrial Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 10607, Taiwan
Winarno: Department of Industrial Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 10607, Taiwan
Achmad Maulidin: Department of Industrial Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 10607, Taiwan
A. A. N. Perwira Redi: Industrial Engineering Department, BINUS Graduate Program—Master of Industrial Engineering, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta 11480, Indonesia
Shih-Wei Lin: Department of Information Management, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan 33302, Taiwan
Chao-Lung Yang: Department of Industrial Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 10607, Taiwan

Mathematics, 2021, vol. 9, issue 14, 1-22

Abstract: This research presents a variant of the vehicle routing problem known as the path cover problem with time windows (PCPTW), in which each vehicle starts with a particular customer and finishes its route at another customer. The vehicles serve each customer within the customer’s time windows. PCPTW is motivated by a practical strategy for companies to reduce operational cost by hiring freelance workers, thus allowing workers to directly service customers without reporting to the office. A mathematical programming model is formulated for the problem. This research also proposes a simulated annealing heuristic with restart strategy (SARS) to solve PCPTW and test it on several benchmark datasets. Computational results indicate that the proposed SARS effectively solves PCPTW.

Keywords: simulated annealing with restart strategy; vehicle routing problem; path cover problem; time windows (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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