TY - JOUR
T1 - A threshold accepting approach to the open vehicle routing problem
AU - Tarantilis, Christos D.
AU - Ioannou, George
AU - Kiranoudis, Chris T.
AU - Prastacos, Gregory P.
PY - 2004
Y1 - 2004
N2 - In this paper we consider the operational planning problem of physical distribution via a fleet of hired vehicles, for which the travelling cost is solely a function of the sequence of locations visited within all open delivery routes, while vehicle fixed cost is inexistent. The problem is a special class of vehicle routing and is encountered in the literature as the Open Vehicle Routing Problem (OVRP), since vehicles are not required to return to the depot. The goal is to distribute in an optimal way finished goods from a central facility to geographically dispersed customers, which pose daily demand for items produced in the facility and act as sales points for consumers. To solve the problem, we employ an annealing-based method that utilizes a backtracking policy of the threshold value when no acceptances of feasible solutions occur during the search process. Computational results on a set of benchmark problems show that the proposed method consistently out-performs previous algorithms for solving the OVRP. The approach can serve as the means for effective fleet planning in real-life problems.
AB - In this paper we consider the operational planning problem of physical distribution via a fleet of hired vehicles, for which the travelling cost is solely a function of the sequence of locations visited within all open delivery routes, while vehicle fixed cost is inexistent. The problem is a special class of vehicle routing and is encountered in the literature as the Open Vehicle Routing Problem (OVRP), since vehicles are not required to return to the depot. The goal is to distribute in an optimal way finished goods from a central facility to geographically dispersed customers, which pose daily demand for items produced in the facility and act as sales points for consumers. To solve the problem, we employ an annealing-based method that utilizes a backtracking policy of the threshold value when no acceptances of feasible solutions occur during the search process. Computational results on a set of benchmark problems show that the proposed method consistently out-performs previous algorithms for solving the OVRP. The approach can serve as the means for effective fleet planning in real-life problems.
KW - Distribution
KW - Logistics
KW - Vehicle routing
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U2 - 10.1051/ro:2004029
DO - 10.1051/ro:2004029
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:12344314528
SN - 0399-0559
VL - 38
SP - 345
EP - 360
JO - RAIRO - Operations Research
JF - RAIRO - Operations Research
IS - 4
ER -