Exact and hyper-heuristic solutions for the distribution-installation problem from the VeRoLog 2019 challenge

Kheiri, Ahmed, Ahmed, Leena, Boyacı, Burak, Gromicho, Joaquim, Mumford, Christine ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4514-0272, Özcan, Ender and Dirikoç, Ali Selim 2020. Exact and hyper-heuristic solutions for the distribution-installation problem from the VeRoLog 2019 challenge. Networks 76 (2) , pp. 294-319. 10.1002/net.21962

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Abstract

This work tackles a rich vehicle routing problem (VRP) problem integrating a capacitated vehicle routing problem with time windows (CVRPTW), and a service technician routing and scheduling problem (STRSP) for delivering various equipment based on customers' requests, and the subsequent installation by a number of technicians. The main objective is to reduce the overall costs of hired resources, and the total transportation costs of trucks/technicians. The problem was the topic of the fourth edition of the VeRoLog Solver Challenge in cooperation with the ORTEC company. Our contribution to research is the development of a mathematical model for this problem and a novel hyper‐heuristic algorithm to solve the problem based on a population of solutions. Experimental results on two datasets of small and real‐world size revealed the success of the hyper‐heuristic approach in finding optimal solutions in a shorter computational time, when compared to our exact model. The results of the large size dataset were also compared to the results of the eight finalists in the competition and were found to be competitive, proving the potential of our developed hyper‐heuristic framework.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Computer Science & Informatics
Additional Information:	Special Issue on Optimization in Vehicle Routing and Logistics
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	0028-3045
Funders:	KTP11692
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 June 2020
Date of Acceptance:	26 May 2020
Last Modified:	21 May 2023 20:37
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/132885

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