Title: Mixed integer programming for vehicle routing problem with time windows

Authors: Divya Aggarwal; Vijay Kumar

Addresses: Computer Science and Engineering Department, Thapar University, Patiala, Punjab, 147001, India ' Computer Science and Engineering Department, Thapar University, Patiala, Punjab, 147001, India

Abstract: Being a key element in logistics distribution, vehicle routing problem becomes an importance research topic in management and computation science. Vehicle routing problem (VRP) with time windows is a specialisation of VRP. In this paper, a brief description of VRP is presented. A mixed integer programming (MIP) is utilised to solve the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). A novel mathematical model of MIP is formulated and implemented using IBM CPLEX. A novel constraint is designed to optimise the number of vehicle used. The proposed model is used to optimise both transportation cost and number of vehicle used simultaneously. The proposed model is tested on two well-known instances of Solomon's benchmark test problem. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed formulation provides promising solutions in reasonable computation time. The sensitivity analysis of customer nodes is also studied.

Keywords: VRP; vehicle routing problem; time windows; Solomon's instance; CPLEX; MIP; mixed integer programming.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISTA.2019.097744

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2019 Vol.18 No.1/2, pp.4 - 19

Received: 31 Mar 2017
Accepted: 07 Jun 2017
Published online: 07 Feb 2019 *

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