Title: Large-scale vehicle routing problem with massive precedence and cluster constraints

Authors: Yongzhong Wu; Simin Huang; Yu Chen

Addresses: School of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, No. 381 Wushan Rd., Tianhe District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong 510641, China ' School of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, No. 381 Wushan Rd., Tianhe District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong 510641, China ' UOW College Hong Kong, 1/F, Le Billionnaire, 46 Sa Po Road, Kowloon City, Hong Kong, China

Abstract: With the continuous development of the urban logistics industry, the vehicle routing problem (VRP) manifests in increasingly large-scale and complex scenarios. In this study, a realistic large-scale VRP with massive precedence and cluster constraints is studied. An artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is designed to solve the problem. A route repair procedure is devised to ensure the satisfaction of all the constraints in realistic-sized problems. The algorithms are used to solve a set of real instances for a courier company in China. For such large-scale problems, the improved ABC algorithm performs significantly better than the basic ABC algorithm without the route repair procedure. This study further analyses the sensitivity of the results to the values assigned to a series of weighting coefficients on the constraints and objectives. This provides the company with flexibility in its operations under different operating circumstances.

Keywords: multi-objective VRP; precedence and cluster constraints; artificial bee colony; ABC; route repair procedure; metaheuristic.

DOI: 10.1504/IJADS.2022.123850

International Journal of Applied Decision Sciences, 2022 Vol.15 No.4, pp.385 - 425

Received: 29 Oct 2020
Accepted: 03 Apr 2021
Published online: 04 Jul 2022 *

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