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

Effective Exact Solution Framework for Routing Optimization with Time Windows and Travel Time Uncertainty

We consider a vehicle routing problem with time windows under uncertain travel times where the goal is to determine routes for a fleet of homogeneous vehicles to arrive at the locations of customers within their stipulated time windows to the maximum extent, while ensuring that the total travel cost does not exceed a prescribed budget. … Read more

Heuristic approaches for split delivery vehicle routing problems

We propose a matheuristic approach to solve split delivery variants of the vehicle routing problem (VRP). The proposed method is based on the use of several mathematical programming components within an Iterated Local Search metaheuristic framework. In addition to well-known VRP local search heuristics, we include new types of improvement and perturbation strategies that are … Read more

Multi-depot routing with split deliveries: Models and a branch-and-cut algorithm

We study the multi-depot split-delivery vehicle routing problem (MDSDVRP) which combines the advantages and potential cost-savings of multiple depots and split-deliveries and develop the first exact algorithm for this problem. We propose an integer programming formulation using a small number of decision variables and several sets of valid inequalities. These inequalities focus on ensuring the … Read more

Solving the Home Service Assignment, Routing, and Appointment Scheduling (H-SARA) problem with Uncertainties

The Home Service Assignment, Routing, and Appointment scheduling (H-SARA) problem integrates the strategical fleet-sizing, tactical assignment, operational vehicle routing and scheduling subproblems at different decision levels, with a single period planning horizon and uncertainty (stochasticity) from the service duration, travel time, and customer cancellation rate. We propose a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer linear programming model for … Read more

Decomposition strategies for vehicle routing heuristics

Decomposition techniques are an important component of modern heuristics for large instances of vehicle routing problems. The current literature lacks a characterisation of decomposition strategies and a systematic investigation of their impact when integrated into state-of-the-art heuristics. This paper fills this gap: we discuss the main characteristics of decomposition techniques in vehicle routing heuristics, highlight … Read more

Robust Vehicle Routing under Uncertainty via Branch-Price-and-Cut

This paper contemplates how branch-price-and-cut solvers can be employed along with the robust optimization paradigm to address parametric uncertainty in the context of vehicle routing problems. In this setting, given postulated uncertainty sets for customer demands and vehicle travel times, one aims to identify a set of cost-effective routes for vehicles to traverse, such that … Read more

Improving Column-Generation for Vehicle Routing Problems via Random Coloring and Parallelization

We consider a variant of the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) where each customer has a unit demand and the goal is to minimize the total cost of routing a fleet of capacitated vehicles from one or multiple depots to visit all customers. We propose two parallel algorithms to efficiently solve the column-generation based linear-programming relaxation … Read more

Minimizing delays of patient transports with incomplete information: A modeling approach based on the Vehicle Routing Problem

We investigate a challenging task in ambulatory care, the minimizing of delays of patient transports. In practice, a limited number of vehicles is available for non-rescue transports. Furthermore, the dispatcher rarely has access to complete information when establishing a transport plan for dispatching the vehicles. If additional transport is requested on demand then schedules need … Read more

An Exact Solution Method for the TSP with Drone Based on Decomposition

The Traveling Salesperson Problem with Drone (TSP–D) is a routing model in which a given set of customer locations must be visited in the least amount of time, either by a truck route starting and ending at a depot or by a drone dispatched from the truck en route. We study the TSP–D model and … Read more