Study of Greedy Search with Multiple Improvement Heuristics for Vehicle Routing Problems

Vehicle routing problems have been extensively studied using a variety of search methods and meta-heuristics. However, most search methods are carried out using only a single improvement heuristic. Here, we report on a study using four improvement heuristics embedded in a simple steepest descent search engine. We conclude that reasonable results can be produced quickly by this simple method. A small study of the effectiveness of the different improvement heuristics was also undertaken—it is shown that the RELOCATE operator is invaluable and that solutions with longer vehicle routes benefited more from using a rich set of improvement heuristics.