Title: A heuristic method for solving reverse logistics vehicle routing problems with time windows

Authors: Sally Kassem; Mingyuan Chen

Addresses: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve West, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8, Canada. ' Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve West, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8, Canada

Abstract: Vehicle routing problems with simultaneous pickup and delivery with time windows are studied in this paper. In a closed-loop logistics network, vehicles visiting customers for pickup and delivery may be only allowed for certain time intervals. A mixed integer programming model of the problem is presented. It has been known that solving vehicle routing problems with time windows is NP-hard. A heuristic solution procedure is developed to solve the problem. The proposed heuristic is tested on a number of numerical examples based on modified benchmark problems in the literature.

Keywords: vehicle routing; reverse logistics; time windows; simultaneous pickup and delivery; heuristics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2012.048861

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2012 Vol.12 No.2, pp.207 - 222

Published online: 20 Dec 2014 *

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