New cuts and a branch-cut-and-price model for the Multi Vehicle Covering Tour Problem

\(\) The Multi-Vehicle Covering Tour Problem (m-CTP) involves a graph in which the set of vertices is partitioned into a depot and three distinct subsets representing customers, mandatory facilities, and optional facilities. Each customer is linked to a specific subset of optional facilities that define its coverage set. The goal is to determine a set … Read more

A new family of route formulations for split delivery vehicle routing problems

We propose a new family of formulations with route-based variables for the split delivery vehicle routing problem with and without time windows. Each formulation in this family is characterized by the maximum number of different demand quantities that can be delivered to a customer during a vehicle visit. As opposed to previous formulations in the … Read more

A Generic Exact Solver for Vehicle Routing and Related Problems

Major advances were recently obtained in the exact solution of Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs). Sophisticated Branch-Cut-and-Price (BCP) algorithms for some of the most classical VRP variants now solve many instances with up to a few hundreds of customers. However, adapting and reimplementing those successful algorithms for other variants can be a very demanding task. This … Read more

Branch-and-cut-and-price for the robust capacitated vehicle routing problem with knapsack uncertainty

We examine the robust counterpart of the classical Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP). We consider two types of uncertainty sets for the customer demands: the classical budget polytope introduced by Bertsimas and Sim (2003), and a partitioned budget polytope proposed by Gounaris et al. (2013). We show that using the set-partitioning formulation it is possible … Read more

A Bucket Graph Based Labeling Algorithm with Application to Vehicle Routing

We consider the Resource Constrained Shortest Path problem arising as a subproblem in state-of-the-art Branch-Cut-and-Price algorithms for vehicle routing problems. We propose a variant of the bi-directional label correcting algorithm in which the labels are stored and extended according to so-called bucket graph. Such organization of labels helps to decrease significantly the number of dominance … Read more

Robust constrained shortest path problems under budgeted uncertainty

We study the robust constrained shortest path problem under resource uncertainty. After proving that the problem is \NPhard in the strong sense for arbitrary uncertainty sets, we focus on budgeted uncertainty sets introduced by Bertsimas and Sim (2003) and their extension to variable uncertainty by Poss (2013). We apply classical techniques to show that the … Read more

New Benchmark Instances for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem

The recent research on the CVRP is being slowed down by the lack of a good set of benchmark instances. The existing sets suff er from at least one of the following drawbacks: (i) became too easy for current algorithms; (ii) are too arti cial; (iii) are too homogeneous, not covering the wide range of characteristics found … Read more

Solving bilevel combinatorial optimization as bilinear min-max optimization via a branch-and-cut algorithm

In this paper, we propose a generic branch-and -cut algorithm for a special class of bi-level combinatorial optimization problems. Namely, we study such problems that can be reformulated as bilinear min-max combinatorial optimization problems. We show that the reformulation can be efficiently solved by a branch-and-cut algorithm whose cuts represent the inner maximization feasibility set. … Read more

A Branch-and-Bound Algorithm for the Close-Enough Traveling Salesman Problem

This paper deals with the Close-Enough Traveling Salesman Problem (CETSP). In the CETSP, rather than visiting the vertex (customer) itself, the salesman must visit a specific region containing such vertex. To solve this problem, we propose a simple yet effective exact algorithm, based on Branch-and-Bound and Second Order Cone Programming (SOCP). The proposed algorithm was … Read more