A Branch-and-Price Approach to the Vehicle Routing Problem with Simultaneous Distribution and Collection

Mauro Dell’Amico (), Giovanni Righini () and Matteo Salani ()
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Mauro Dell’Amico: Dipartimento di Scienze e Metodi per l’Ingegneria, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Viale Allegri, 13 42100 Reggio Emilia, Italy
Giovanni Righini: Dipartimento di Tecnologie dell’Informazione, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Bramante 65, 26013 Crema, Italy
Matteo Salani: Dipartimento di Tecnologie dell’Informazione, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Bramante 65, 26013 Crema, Italy

Transportation Science, 2006, vol. 40, issue 2, 235-247

Abstract: The vehicle routing problem with simultaneous distribution and collection (VRPSDC) is the variation of the capacitated vehicle routing problem that arises when the distribution of goods from a depot to a set of customers and the collection of waste from the customers to the depot must be performed by the same vehicles of limited capacity and the customers can be visited in any order. We study how the branch-and-price technique can be applied to the solution of this problem and in particular we compare two different ways of solving the pricing subproblem: exact dynamic programming and state space relaxation. By applying a bidirectional search we experimentally prove its effectiveness in solving the subproblem. We also devise suitable branching strategies for both the exact and the relaxed approach and we report on an extensive set of computational experiments on benchmark instances with both simple and composite demands.

Keywords: reverse logistics; vehicle routing; branch and price; dynamic programming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

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