Abstract
In this paper, we consider a multi-depot periodic vehicle routing problem which is characterized by the presence of a homogeneous fleet of vehicles, multiple depots, multiple periods, and two types of constraints that are often found in reality, i.e., vehicle capacity and route duration constraints. The objective is to minimize total travel costs. To tackle the problem, we propose an efficient path relinking algorithm whose exploration and exploitation strategies enable the algorithm to address the problem in two different settings: (1) As a stand-alone algorithm, and (2) As a part of a co-operative search algorithm called integrative co-operative search. The performance of the proposed path relinking algorithm is evaluated, in each of the above ways, based on standard benchmark instances. The computational results show that the developed PRA performs well, in both solution quality and computational efficiency.
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Acknowledgments
Partial funding for this project has been provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC), through its Industrial Research Chair, Collaborative Research and Development, and Discovery Grant programs, by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Nature et Technologies (FRQ-NT) through its Team Research Project program, and by the EMME/2-STAN Royalty Research Funds (Dr. Heinz Spiess). We also gratefully acknowledge the support of Fonds de recherche du Qubec through their infrastructure grants.
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Rahimi-Vahed, A., Crainic, T.G., Gendreau, M. et al. A path relinking algorithm for a multi-depot periodic vehicle routing problem. J Heuristics 19, 497–524 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10732-013-9221-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10732-013-9221-2