Title: A probabilistic granular tabu search for the distance constrained capacitated vehicle routing problem

Authors: Jose Bernal; John Willmer Escobar; Juan Camilo Paz; Rodrigo Linfati; Gustavo Gatica

Addresses: Escuela de Ingeniería de Sistemas, Universidad del Valle, Cali 76001000, Valle del Cauca, Colombia ' Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali, Cali 76001000, Valle del Cauca, Colombia ' Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali, Cali 76001000, Valle del Cauca, Colombia ' Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, Universidad del Bío-Bío, Concepción 4051381, Chile ' Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago de Chile 8320000, Chile

Abstract: We address the well-known distance constrained capacitated vehicle routing problem (DCVRP) by considering Euclidean distances, in which the aim is to determine the routes to be performed to fulfil the demand of the customers by using a homogeneous fleet. The objective is to minimise the sum of the variable costs associated with the distance travelled by the performed routes. In this paper, we propose a metaheuristic algorithm based on a probabilistic granular tabu search (pGTS) by considering different neighbourhoods. In particular, the proposed algorithm selects a neighbourhood by using a probabilistic discrete function, which is modified dynamically during the search by favouring the moves that have improved the best solution found so far. A shaking procedure is applied whenever the best solution found so far is not improved for a given number of iterations. Computational experiments on benchmark instances taken from the literature show that the proposed approach is able to obtain high quality solutions, within short computing times.

Keywords: probabilistic granular tabu search; pGTS; distance constrained capacitated vehicle routing problem; DCVRP; metaheuristic algorithms; vehicle routing problems; VRPs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2018.094267

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2018 Vol.29 No.4, pp.453 - 477

Received: 24 May 2016
Accepted: 09 Aug 2016
Published online: 26 Aug 2018 *

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