Abstract
This paper presents a new hybrid variable neighborhood-tabu search heuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Time windows. It also proposes a minimum backward time slack algorithm applicable to a multiple time windows environment. This algorithm records the minimum waiting time and the minimum delay during route generation and adjusts the arrival and departure times backward. The implementation of the proposed heuristic is compared to an ant colony heuristic on benchmark instances involving multiple time windows. Computational results on newly generated instances are provided.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 269-281 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Computers and Operations Research |
| Volume | 52 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2014 |
Funding
This work was partially supported by KFUPM Deanship of research under Grant IN101038 and by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council under Grants 105574-12 and 39682-10 . This support is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are due to the referees for their valuable comments.
Keywords
- Multiple time windows
- Tabu search
- Variable neighborhood search
- Vehicle routing problem
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Computer Science
- Modelling and Simulation
- Management Science and Operations Research