Reachability cuts for the vehicle routing problem with time windows

This paper introduces a class of cuts, called reachability cuts, for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW). Reachability cuts are closely related to cuts derived from precedence constraints in the Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows and to k-path cuts for the VRPTW. In particular, any reachability cut dominates one or more k-path cuts. The paper presents separation procedures for reachability cuts and reports computational experiments on well-known VRPTW instances. The computational results suggest that reachability cuts can be highly useful as cutting planes for certain VRPTW instances.Routing; time windows; precedence constraints

Efficient Heuristic Algorithms for Single-Vehicle Task Planning With Precedence Constraints

This article investigates the task planning problem where one vehicle needs to visit a set of target locations while respecting the precedence constraints that specify the sequence orders to visit the targets. The objective is to minimize the vehicle’s total travel distance to visit all the targets while satisfying all the precedence constraints. We show that the optimization problem is NP-hard, and consequently, to measure the proximity of a suboptimal solution from the optimal, a lower bound on the optimal solution is constructed based on the graph theory. Then, inspired by the existing topological sorting techniques, a new topological sorting strategy is proposed; in addition, facilitated by the sorting, we propose several heuristic algorithms to solve the task planning problem. The numerical experiments show that the designed algorithms can quickly lead to satisfying solutions and have better performance in comparison with popular genetic algorithms

A new VRPPD model and a hybrid heuristic solution approach for e-tailing

We analyze a business model for e-supermarkets to enable multi-product sourcing capacity through co-opetition (collaborative competition). The logistics aspect of our approach is to design and execute a network system where “premium” goods are acquired from vendors at multiple locations in the supply network and delivered to customers. Our specific goals are to: (i) investigate the role of premium product offerings in creating critical mass and profit; (ii) develop a model for the multiple-pickup single-delivery vehicle routing problem in the presence of multiple vendors; and (iii) propose a hybrid solution approach. To solve the problem introduced in this paper, we develop a hybrid metaheuristic approach that uses a Genetic Algorithm for vendor selection and allocation, and a modified savings algorithm for the capacitated VRP with multiple pickup, single delivery and time windows (CVRPMPDTW). The proposed Genetic Algorithm guides the search for optimal vendor pickup location decisions, and for each generated solution in the genetic population, a corresponding CVRPMPDTW is solved using the savings algorithm. We validate our solution approach against published VRPTW solutions and also test our algorithm with Solomon instances modified for CVRPMPDTW

Branch-and-Refine zur Lösung zeitabhängiger Probleme

Einer der Standardansätze zur Lösung zeitabhängiger diskreter Optimierungsprobleme, wie z.B. das Problem des Handlungsreisenden mit Zeitfenstern oder das Kürzeste Wege Problem mit Zeitfenstern, ist die Herleitung einer sogenannten zeitindizierten Formulierung. Wenn dem Problem eine Struktur zu Grunde liegt, die durch einen Graphen beschrieben werden kann, basiert die zeitindizierte Formulierung normalerweise auf einem anderen, erweiterten Graphen, der in der Literatur als zeitexpandierter Graph bezeichnet wird. Der zeitexpandierte Graph kann oft so generiert werden, dass alle Zeitbeschränkungen bereits aufgrund seiner Topologie erfüllt sind und somit Algorithmen für die entsprechende zeitunabhängige Variante angewendet werden können. Der Nachteil dieses Ansatzes ist, dass die Mengen der Ecken und Bögen des zeitexpandierten Graphen viel größer sind als die des ursprünglichen Graphen. In neueren Arbeiten hat sich jedoch gezeigt, dass für viele praktische Anwendungen eine partielle Expandierung des Graphen, die möglicherweise zeitunmögliche Pfade zulässt, oft ausreicht, um eine beweisbar optimale Lösung zu finden. Diese Ansätze verfeinern iterativ den ursprünglichen Graphen und lösen in jeder Iteration eine Relaxierung der zeitexpandierten Formulierung. Wenn die Lösung der aktuellen Relaxation alle Zeitbeschränkungen erfüllt, kann daraus eine optimale Lösung abgeleitet werden, und der Algorithmus terminiert. In dieser Arbeit stellen wir neue Ideen vor, die das Übertragen von Informationen über die optimale Lösung eines gröberen Graphen zu einem verfeinerten Graphen ermöglichen und zeigen, wie diese in Algorithmen verwendet werden können. Genauer gesagt stellen wir einen neuen Algorithmus zur Lösung von MILP-Formulierungen (Mixed Integer Linear Program) von zeitabhängigen Problemen vor, der es ermöglicht, die Graphenverfeinerung während der Untersuchung des Branch-and-Bound Baums durchzuführen, anstatt jedes Mal neu zu starten, wenn die optimale Lösung sich als nicht zulässig herausgestellt hat. Um die praktische Relevanz dieses Algorithmus zu demonstrieren, präsentieren wir Ergebnisse von numerische Experimenten seiner Anwendung auf das Kürzeste Wege Problem mit Zeitfenstern und das Problem des Handlungsreisenden mit Zeitfenstern.One of the standard approaches for solving time-dependent discrete optimization problems, such as the travelling salesman problem with time-windows or the shortest path problem with time-windows is to derive a so-called time-indexed formulation. If the problem has an underlying structure that can be described by a graph, the time-indexed formulation is usually based on a different, extended graph, commonly referred to as the time-expanded graph. The time-expanded graph can often be derived in such a way that all time constraints are incorporated in its topology, and therefore algorithms for the corresponding time-independent variant become applicable. The downside of this approach is, that the sets of vertices and arcs of the time-expanded graph are much larger than the ones of the original graph. In recent works, however, it has been shown that for many practical applications a partial graph expansion, that might contain time infeasible paths, often suffices to find a proven optimal solution. These approaches, instead, iteratively refine the original graph and solve a relaxation of the time-expanded formulation in each iteration. When the solution of the current relaxation is time feasible an optimal solution can be derived from it and the algorithm terminates. In this work we present new ideas, that allow for the propagation of information about the optimal solution of a coarser graph to a more refined graph and show how these can be used in algorithms, which are based on graph refinement. More precisely we present a new algorithm for solving Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) formulations of time-dependent problems that allows for the graph refinement to be carried out during the exploration of the branch-and-bound tree instead of restarting whenever the optimal solution was found to be infeasible. For demonstrating the practical relevance of this algorithm we present numerical results on its application to the shortest path problem with time-windows and the traveling salesman problem with time-windows

Stronger multi-commodity flow formulations of the (capacitated) sequential ordering problem

The sequential ordering problem (SOP) is the generalisation of the asymmetric travelling salesman problem in which there are precedence relations between pairs of nodes. Hernandez & Salazar introduced a multi-commodity flow (MCF) formulation for a generalisation of the SOP in which the vehicle has a limited capacity. We strengthen this MCF formulation by fixing variables and adding valid equations. We then use polyhedral projection, together with some known results on flows, cuts and metrics, to derive new families of strong valid inequalities for both problems. Finally, we give computational results, which show that our findings yield good lower bounds in practice