Ant colony optimization and its application to the vehicle routing problem with pickups and deliveries

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a population-based metaheuristic that can be used to find approximate solutions to difficult optimization problems. It was first introduced for solving the Traveling Salesperson Problem. Since then many implementations of ACO have been proposed for a variety of combinatorial optimization. In this chapter, ACO is applied to the Vehicle Routing Problem with Pickup and Delivery (VRPPD). VRPPD determines a set of vehicle routes originating and ending at a single depot and visiting all customers exactly once. The vehicles are not only required to deliver goods but also to pick up some goods from the customers. The objective is to minimize the total distance traversed. The chapter first provides an overview of ACO approach and presents several implementations to various combinatorial optimization problems. Next, VRPPD is described and the related literature is reviewed, Then, an ACO approach for VRPPD is discussed. The approach proposes a new visibility function which attempts to capture the “delivery” and “pickup” nature of the problem. The performance of the approach is tested using well-known benchmark problems from the literature

Ant Colony Optimization on Crowdsourced Delivery Trip Consolidation

Common practice in crowdsourced delivery services is through direct delivery. That  is by dispatching direct trip to a driver nearby the origin location. The total distance can be reduced through multiple pickup and delivery by increasing the number of requests in a trip. The research implements exact algorithm to solve the consolidation problem with up to 3 requests in a trip. Greedy heuristic is performed to construct initial route based on highest savings. The result is then optimized using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Four scenarios are compared. A direct delivery scenarios and three multiple pickup and delivery scenarios. These include 2-consolidated delivery, 3-consolidated delivery, and 3-consolidated delivery optimized with ACO. Four parameters are used to evaluate using Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP). These include the number of trips, total distance, total duration, and security concerns. The case study is based on Yogyakarta area for a whole day. The final route optimized with ACO shows 178 requests can be completed in 94 trips. Compared to direct delivery, consolidation can provides savings up to 20% in distance and 14% in duration. The evaluation result using AHP shows that ACO scenario is the best scenario

Ant Colony Optimization on Crowdsourced Delivery Trip Consolidation

Common practice in crowdsourced delivery services is through direct delivery. That  is by dispatching direct trip to a driver nearby the origin location. The total distance can be reduced through multiple pickup and delivery by increasing the number of requests in a trip.The research implements exact algorithm to solve the consolidation problem with up to 3 requests in a trip. Greedy heuristic is performed to construct initial route based on highest savings. The result is then optimized using Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). Four scenarios are compared. A direct delivery scenarios and three multiple pickup and delivery scenarios. These include 2-consolidated delivery, 3-consolidated delivery, and 3-consolidated delivery optimized with ACO. Four parameters are used to evaluate using Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP). These include the number of trips, total distance, total duration, and security concerns.The case study is based on Yogyakarta area for a whole day. The final route optimized with ACO shows 178 requests can be completed in 94 trips. Compared to direct delivery, consolidation can provides savings up to 20% in distance and 14% in duration. The evaluation result using AHP shows that ACO scenario is the best scenario.

On green routing and scheduling problem

The vehicle routing and scheduling problem has been studied with much interest within the last four decades. In this paper, some of the existing literature dealing with routing and scheduling problems with environmental issues is reviewed, and a description is provided of the problems that have been investigated and how they are treated using combinatorial optimization tools

Optimal route planning of agricultural field operations using ant colony optimization

Farming operations efficiency is a crucial factor that determines the overall operational cost in agricultural production systems.  Improved efficiency can be achieved by implementing advanced planning methods for the execution of field operations dealing, especially with the routing and area coverage optimisation aspects. Recently, a new type of field area coverage patterns, the B-patterns, has been introduced.  B-patterns are the result of a combinatorial optimisation process that minimizes operational criterions such as, the operational time, non-working travelled distance, fuel consumption etc.  In this paper an algorithmic approach for the generation of B-patterns based on ant colony optimisation is presented.  Ant colony optimization metaheuristic was chosen for the solution of the graph optimisation problem inherent in the generation of B-patterns.  Experimental results on two selected fields were presented for the demonstration of the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Based on the results, it was shown that it is feasible to use ant colony optimization for the generation of optimal routes for field area coverage while tests made on the resulting routes indicated that they can be followed by any farm machine equipped with auto-steering and navigation systems

Low Carbon Logistics Optimization for Multi-depot CVRP with Backhauls - Model and Solution

CVRP (Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problems) is the integrated optimization of VRP and Bin Packing Problem (BPP), which has far-reaching practical significance, because only by taking both loading and routing into consideration can we make sure the delivery route is the most economic and the items are completely and reasonably loaded into the vehicles. In this paper, the CVRP with backhauls from multiple depots is addressed from the low carbon perspective. The problem calls for the minimization of the carbon emissions of a fleet of vehicles needed for the delivery of the items demanded by the clients. The overall problem, denoted as 2L-MDCVRPB, is NP-hard and it is very difficult to get a good performance solution in practice. We propose a quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (QPSO) and exploration heuristic local search algorithm (EHLSA) in order to solve this model. In addition, three groups of computational experiments based on well-known benchmark instances are carried out to test the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm, thereby demonstrating that the proposed method takes a short computing time to generate high quality solutions. For some instances, our algorithm can obtain new better solutions

Scheduling Deliveries with Backhauls in Thailand's Cement Industry

In this study, the Truckload Delivery with Backhaul Scheduling Problem (TDBSP) is formulated and an Ant Colony Optimization methodology developed for a related problem, the Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhaul and Time Windows (VRPBTW), is adapted for its solution. The TDBSP differs from the VRPBTW in that shipments are in units of truckloads, multiple time windows in multiple days are available for delivery to customers, limited space for servicing customers is available and multiple visits to each customer may be required. The problem is motivated by a real-world application arising at a leading cement producer in Thailand. Experts at the cement production plant assign vehicles to cement customers and lignite mines based on manual computations and experience. This study provides mathematical and computational frameworks for modeling and solving this real-world application

Application of an Open Source Spreadsheet Solver in Single Depot Routing Problem

The VRP has been broadly developed with additional feature such as deliveries, selective pickups time windows. This paper presents the application of an open source spreadsheet solver in single depot routing problem. This study focuses on Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Company as a case study. The objective of this research is to minimize the distance travel. This research begins by collecting data from a respective FMCG Company. An FMCG company based in Jakarta, Indonesia provides drinking water packaged in the gallon. This FMCG Company has two distributions characteristic. Head office distribution was used in this case study due to highest internally rejected by the company such as un-routed order, no visit, not enough time to visit and transportation issue. Based on computational results, overall solutions to delivered 214 gallons to 26 customers having total distance traveled 56.76 km, total driving time 2 hour and 49 minutes, the total driver working time 7 hours and 57 minutes. Total savings of distances traveled between current route and the proposed solutions using open source spreadsheet solver is 7.25 km. As a result, by using open source spreadsheet solver in single depot routing problem can be implemented in FMCG Company