The Time Window Assignment Vehicle Routing Problem with Time-Dependent Travel Times

In this paper, we introduce the time window assignment vehicle routing problem (TWAVRP) with time-dependent travel times. It is the problem of assigning time windows to customers before their demand is known and creating vehicle routes adhering to these time windows after demand becomes known. The g...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTransportation science Vol. 52; no. 2; pp. 261 - 276
Main Authors Spliet, Remy, Dabia, Said, Van Woensel, Tom
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore INFORMS 01.03.2018
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Subjects
Algorithms
branch-price-and-cut
column generation
Delivery of goods
Integer programming
Mathematical research
Network flow problem
Route planning
Routing
Scheduling
Time
Time dependence
Time management
Transportation
Travel time
Vehicle routing
Windows (intervals)
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Summary:In this paper, we introduce the time window assignment vehicle routing problem (TWAVRP) with time-dependent travel times. It is the problem of assigning time windows to customers before their demand is known and creating vehicle routes adhering to these time windows after demand becomes known. The goal is to assign the time windows in such a way that the expected transportation costs are minimized. We develop a branch-price-and-cut algorithm to solve this problem to optimality. The pricing problem that has to be solved is a new variant of the shortest path problem, which includes a capacity constraint, time-dependent travel times, time window constraints on both the nodes and on the arcs, and linear node costs. For solving the pricing problem, we develop an exact labeling algorithm and a tabu search heuristic. Furthermore, we present new valid inequalities, which are specifically designed for the TWAVRP with time-dependent travel times. Finally, we present results of numerical experiments to illustrate the performance of the algorithm.
ISSN:0041-1655
1526-5447
DOI:10.1287/trsc.2016.0705