Open vehicle routing problem with split deliveries: mathematical formulations and a cutting-plane method

Efraín Ruiz y Ruiz (), Irma García-Calvillo () and Samuel Nucamendi-Guillén ()
Additional contact information
Efraín Ruiz y Ruiz: Tecnológico Nacional de México/Instituto Tecnológico de Saltillo
Irma García-Calvillo: Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila
Samuel Nucamendi-Guillén: Universidad Panamericana

Operational Research, 2022, vol. 22, issue 2, No 7, 1017-1037

Abstract: Abstract This study addresses the open vehicle routing problem with split deliveries, a variant of the classical vehicle routing problem that allows open routes and partitioned deliveries for customers (i.e., multiple vehicles may serve one customer). This approach may be beneficial for companies interested in reducing their logistics and distribution costs. This study is motivated by a company in the pharmaceutical industry, that seeks to explore the possibility of splitting their deliveries to improve quality indicators related to on-time deliveries and customer satisfaction. Two mixed-integer formulations of the problem are proposed. Additionally, a cutting-plane method is designed to improve the optimization performance. Computational experiments were conducted to validate the performance of the formulations. The second formulation effectiveness was confirmed by providing optimal solutions for instances of up to 30 nodes in a reasonable computational time. The incorporation of the cutting-plane method improves performance with a substantial reduction in the GAP. In the case study, this new approach shows its effectiveness in economic terms by providing savings of up to 20% of the current distribution costs.

Keywords: Open vehicle routing; Mixed integer programming; Split delivery; Logistic distribution; Cutting-plane method; Mixed integer formulations; 90C11; 90B06 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12351-020-00580-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:operea:v:22:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s12351-020-00580-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... search/journal/12351

DOI: 10.1007/s12351-020-00580-8

Access Statistics for this article

Operational Research is currently edited by Nikolaos F. Matsatsinis, John Psarras and Constantin Zopounidis

More articles in Operational Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().