A Vehicle Routing Problem with Flexible Time Windows

نویسندگان

  • Duygu Tas
  • Ola Jabali
  • Tom Van Woensel
چکیده

In this paper, we introduce the Vehicle Routing Problem with Flexible Time Windows (VRPFlexTW), in which vehicles are allowed to deviate from customer time windows by a given tolerance. This flexibility enables savings in the operational costs of carriers, since customers may be served before and after the earliest and latest time window bounds, respectively. However, as time window deviations are undesired from a customer service perspective, a penalty proportional to these deviations is accounted for in the objective function. We develop a solution procedure, in which feasible vehicle routes are constructed via a tabu search algorithm. Furthermore, we propose a linear programming model to handle the detailed scheduling of customer visits for given routes. We validate our solution procedure by a number of Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW) benchmark instances. We highlight the costs involved in integrating flexibility in time windows and underline the advantages of the VRPFlexTW, when compared to the VRPTW.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

A goal programming model for vehicle routing problem with backhauls and soft time windows

The vehicle routing problem with backhauls (VRPB) as an extension of the classical vehicle routing prob-lem (VRP) attempts to define a set of routes which services both linehaul customers whom product are to be delivered and backhaul customers whom goods need to be collected. A primary objective for the problem usually is minimizing the total distribution cost. Most real-life problems have othe...

متن کامل

Competitive Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows and Stochastic Demands

The competitive vehicle routing problem is one of the important issues in transportation area. In this paper a new method for competitive VRP with time windows and stochastic demand is introduced. In the presented method a three time bounds are given and the probability of arrival time between each time bound is assumed to be uniform. The demands of each customer are different in each time wind...

متن کامل

A multi-criteria vehicle routing problem with soft time windows by simulated annealing

This paper presents a multi-criteria vehicle routing problem with soft time windows (VRPSTW) to mini-mize fleet cost, routes cost, and violation of soft time windows penalty. In this case, the fleet is heterogene-ous. The VRPSTW consists of a number of constraints in which vehicles are allowed to serve customers out of the desirable time window by a penalty. It is assumed that this relaxation a...

متن کامل

A PFIH-Based Heuristic for Green Routing Problem with Hard Time Windows

Transportation sector generates a considerable part of each nation's gross domestic product and considered among the largest consumers of oil products in the world. This paper proposes a heuristic method for the vehicle routing problem with hard time windows while incorporating the costs of fuel, driver, and vehicle. The proposed heuristic uses a novel speed optimization algorithm to reach its ...

متن کامل

An Improved Particle Swarm Optimization for a Class of Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problems

Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is addressed to a class of problems for determining a set of vehicle routes, in which each vehicle departs from a given depot, serves a given set of customers, and returns back to the same depot. On the other hand, simultaneous delivery and pickup problems have drawn much attention in the past few years due to its high usage in real world cases. This study, therefo...

متن کامل

Acceleration of Lagrangian Method for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows

The analytic center cutting plane method (ACCPM) is one of successful methods to solve nondifferentiable optimization problems. In this paper ACCPM is used for the first time in the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) to accelerate lagrangian relaxation procedure for the problem. At first the basic cutting plane algorithm and its relationship with column generation method is clari...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Computers & OR

دوره 52  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2014