Large neighborhood search with constraint programming for a vehicle routing problem with synchronization constraints

• Published in: Computers & operations research Vol. 92; pp. 87 - 97
• Main Authors: Hojabri, Hossein, Gendreau, Michel, Potvin, Jean-Yves, Rousseau, Louis-Martin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Elsevier Ltd 01.04.2018; Pergamon Press Inc
• Subjects: Constraint programming; Home theater; Large neighborhood search; Neighborhoods; Numerical analysis; Operations research; Programming; Route planning; Routing; Searching; Studies; Synchronism; Synchronization; Vehicle routing; Vehicles; Windows (intervals); Synchronization; Vehicle routing; Large neighborhood search; Constraint programming
• ISSN: 0305-0548; 1873-765X; 0305-0548
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cor.2017.11.011

•A delivery problem with synchronization constraints among vehicles is addressed with an adaptive large neighborhood search.•The reinsertion operator exploits the constraint propagation capabilities of constraint programming to guarantee feasibility.•Destruction operators specifically designed for our problem are introduced.•Results are reported on instances with up to 200 customers. This paper considers an extension of the vehicle routing problem with time windows, where the arrival of two vehicles at different customer locations must be synchronized. That is, one vehicle has to deliver some product to a customer, like a home theater system, while the crew on another vehicle must install it. This type of problem is often encountered in practice and is very challenging due to the interdependency among the vehicle routes, but has received little attention in the literature. A constraint programming-based adaptive large neighborhood search is proposed to solve this problem. The search abilities of the large neighborhood search and the constraint propagation abilities of constraint programming are combined to determine the feasibility of any proposed modification to the current solution. Numerical results are reported on instances derived from benchmark instances for the vehicle routing problem with time windows with up to 200 customers.