Title: A heuristic to generate input sequence for simulated annealing to solve VRP

Authors: R. Dhanalakshmi, P. Parthiban, Anirban Ghatak

Addresses: Cisco Systems India Pvt. Ltd., No. 148 Asv Suntech Park, Oggium, Old Mahabalipuram Road, Thoraipakkam, Chennai – 600096, Tamil Nadu, India. ' Department of Production Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli – 620 015, India. ' Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai – 400076, Maharashtra, India

Abstract: This paper addresses the issue of input sequence, which affects the results of simulated annealing (SA) for vehicle routing problem (VRP). Also, a heuristic has been proposed which improves the result by 1.7% than the well known and frequently used input sequence. With its ability to provide solutions of good quality at low computing times, the proposed heuristic has ample scope for application as an automated scheduler when implemented at the site of a logistics-planning cell.

Keywords: heuristics; shrink wrap algorithm; simulated annealing; input sequences; vehicle routing problem; VRP; automated scheduling; logistics planning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJENM.2010.034474

International Journal of Enterprise Network Management, 2010 Vol.4 No.1, pp.26 - 38

Published online: 05 Aug 2010 *

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