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In this paper we propose a hybrid approach for solving vehicle routing problems. The main idea is to combine an Ant System (AS) with a problem specific constructive heuristic, namely the well known Savings algorithm. This differs from previous approaches, where the subordinate heuristic was the Nearest Neighbor algorithm initially proposed for the TSP. We compare our approach with some other classic, powerful meta-heuristics and show that our results are competitive. / Series: Report Series SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"

In this project the optimization of transport planning has been studied. The approach was that smaller transport companies do not have the capability to fully optimize their transports. Their transport optimization is performed at a company level, meaning that the end result might be optimal for their company, but that potential for further optimization exists. The idea was to build a collaboration of transport companies, and then to optimize the transports globally within the collaboration. The intent was for the collaboration to perform the same driving assignments but at a lower cost, by using fewer vehicles and drivers, or travel shorter distance, or both combined. This should be achieved by planning the assignments in a smarter way, for example using a company's empty return journey to perform an assignment for another company. Due to the complexity of these types of problems, called Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), shown to be NP-complete, search methods are often used. In this project the method of choice was a PDDL-based planner called LPG-td. It uses enforced hill-climbing together with a best-first search to find feasible solutions. The method was tested for scaling, performance versus another method and against time, as well as together with a real-life based problem. The results showed that LPG-td might not be a suitable candidate to solve the problem considered in this project. The solutions found for the collaboration were worse than for the sum of individual solutions, and used more computational time. Since the solution for the collaboration at most should be equal to the sum of individual solutions, in theory, this meant that the planner failed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2005. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 184-192).

In this paper we present and analyze the application of an Ant System to the Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls and Time Windows (VRPBTW). At the core of the algorithm we use an Insertion procedure to construct solutions. We provide results on the learning and runtime behavior of the algorithm as well as a comparison with a custom made heuristic for the problem. / Series: Report Series SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"

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In this work we present a multiagent Fleet Coordination Problem (FCP). In this formulation, agents seek to minimize the fuel consumed to complete all deliveries while maintaining acceptable on-time delivery performance. Individual vehicles must both (i) bid on the rights to deliver a load of goods from origin to destination in a distributed, cooperative auction and (ii) choose the rate of travel between customer locations. We create two populations of adaptive agents, each to address one of these necessary functions. By training each agent population in separate source domains, we use transfer learning to boost initial performance in the target FCP. This boost removes the need for 300 generations of agent training in the target FCP, though the source problem computation time was less than the computation time for 5 generations in the FCP. / Graduation date: 2012

In this paper,we propose an adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic for the Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problem (2E-VRP) and the Location Routing Problem (LRP).The 2E-VRP arises in two-level transportation systems such as those encountered in the context of city logistics. In such systems, freight arrives at a major terminal and is shipped through intermediate satellite facilities to the final customers. The LRP can be seen as a special case of the 2E-VRP in which vehicle routing is performed only at the second level. We have developed new neighborhood search operators by exploiting the structure of the two problem classes considered and have also adapted existing operators from the literature. The operators are used in a hierarchical scheme reflecting the multi-level nature of the problem. Computational experiments conducted on several sets of instances from the literature show that our algorithm out performs existing solution methods for the 2E-VRP and achieves excellent results on the LRP.

The thesis focuses on how to optimize vehicle routes for distributing logistics. This vehicle route optimization is known as a vehicle routing problem (VRP). The VRP has been extended in numerous directions for instance by some variations that can be combined. One of the extension forms of VRP is a capacitated VRP with stochastics demands (CVRPSD), where the vehicle capacity limit has a non-zero probability of being violated on any route. So, a failure to satisfy the amount of demand can appear. A strategy is required for updating the routes in case of such an event. This strategy is called as recourse action in the thesis. The main objective of the research is how to design the model of CVRPSD and find the optimal solution. The EEV (Expected Effective Value) and FCM (Fuzzy C-Means) – TSP (Travelling Salesman Problem) approaches are described and used to solve CVRPSD. Results have confirmed that the EEV approach has given a better performance than FCM-TSP for solving CVRPSD in small instances. But EEV has disadvantage, that the EEV is not capable to solve big instances in an acceptable running time because of complexity of the problem. In the real situation, the FCM –TSP approach is more suitable for implementations than the EEV because the FCM – TSP can find the solution in a shorter time. The disadvantage of this algorithm is that the computational time depends on the number of customers in a cluster.

This dissertation introduces and analyzes the Bus Evacuation Problem (BEP), a unique Vehicle Routing Problem motivated both by its humanitarian significance and by the routing and scheduling challenges of planning transit-based, regional evacuations. First, a variant where evacuees arrive at constant, location-specific rates is introduced. In this problem, a fleet of capacitated buses must transport all evacuees to a depot/shelter such that the last scheduled pick-up and the end of the evacuee arrival process occurs at a location-specific time. The problem seeks to minimize their accumulated waiting time, restricts the number of pick-ups on each location, and exploits efficiencies from service choice and from allowing buses to unload evacuees at the depot multiple times. It is shown that, depending on the problem instance, increasing the maximum number of pick-ups allowed may reduce both the fleet size requirement and the evacuee waiting time, and that, past a certain threshold, there exist a range of values that guarantees an efficient usage of the available fleet and equitable reductions in waiting time across pick-up locations. Second, an extension of the Ritter (1967) Relaxation Algorithm, which explores the inherent structure of problems with complicating variables and constraints, such as the aforementioned BEP variant, is presented. The modified algorithm allows problems with linear, integer, or mixed-integer subproblems and with linear or quadratic objective functions to be solved to optimality. Empirical studies demonstrate the algorithm viability to solve large optimization problems. Finally, a two-stage stochastic formulation for the BEP is presented. Such variant assumes that all evacuees are at the pick-up locations at the onset of the evacuation, that the set of possible demands is provided, and, more importantly, that the actual demands become known once buses visit the pick-up locations for the first time. The effect of exploratory visits (sampling) and symmetry is explored, and the resulting insights used to develop an improved formulation for the problem. An iterative (dynamic) solution algorithm is proposed. / Ph. D.