Modelling and solution of a large-scale vehicle routing problem at GE appliances & lighting

Ehsan Khodabandeh, Lihui Bai, Sunderesh S. Heragu, Gerald W. Evans, Thomas Elrod and Mark Shirkness

International Journal of Production Research, 2017, vol. 55, issue 4, 1100-1116

Abstract: We consider a special case of the vehicle routing problem where not only each customer has specified delivery time window, but each route has limited time duration. We propose a solution algorithm using network reduction techniques and simulated annealing meta-heuristic. The objective is twofold: minimising the travel time and minimising the total number of vehicles required. The time-window constraint ensures delivery without delay, thus, a potentially higher level of customer satisfaction. The algorithm has helped the transportation planning team at General Electric Appliances & Lighting to significantly reduce the number of required trucks in two real cases, while its performance on randomly generated cases is also efficient when compared to properly selected benchmarking algorithms.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2016.1220685

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