Heuristics for routes generation in pickup and delivery problem

• Published in: Central European journal of operations research Vol. 20; no. 3; pp. 463 - 472
• Main Authors: Pelikan, Jan, Fabry, Jan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer-Verlag 01.09.2012; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Business and Management; Communication networks; Computer networks; Cost control; Delivery of goods; Heuristic; Integer programming; Mathematical models; Operations research; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Optimization; Original Paper; Routing (telecommunications); Shipping; Shipping industry; Studies; Technology application; Transport; Transportation problem (Operations research); Traveling salesman problem; Vehicles; Czech Republic; Integer programming; Pickup and delivery problem; Heuristic method
• ISSN: 1435-246X; 1613-9178
• DOI: 10.1007/s10100-012-0239-6

In shipping services, the goal is to propose cyclical routes which ensure transport of required goods among the main centers of the regions. It is classified as a pickup and delivery problem with split demand and reloading. The objective is to minimize total shipping costs, or the total length of all cyclical routes. The optimum solution gives a number of vehicles going on arcs of the communication network and the amount of goods being transported on the arcs. Consequently, cyclical routes and depots are proposed for all vehicles. First, the multi-graph, in which each directed arc corresponds to exactly one vehicle, is generated. The multi-graph satisfies the condition that the number of arcs entering each node equals the number of arcs exiting the node. The heuristic method of loading goods onto a vehicle in the pickup node and to transport it to the delivery node without reloading onto another vehicle is proposed. The method is verified in the case study carried out on the DHL company.