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The min-max multi-depot vehicle routing problem: heuristics and computational results

Author

Listed:
  • Xingyin Wang

    (Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland, College Park MD, USA)

  • Bruce Golden

    (Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park MD, USA)

  • Edward Wasil

    (Kogod School of Business, American University, Washington DC, USA)

Abstract

In the multi-depot vehicle routing problem (MDVRP), there are several depots where vehicles can start and end their routes. The objective is to minimize the total distance travelled by all vehicles across all depots. The min-max multi-depot vehicle routing problem (Min-Max MDVRP) is a variant of the standard MDVRP. The primary objective is to minimize the length of the longest route. We develop a heuristic (denoted by MD) for the Min-Max MDVRP that has three stages: (1) simplify the multi-depot problem into a single depot problem and solve the simplified problem; (2) improve the maximal route; (3) improve all routes by exchanging customers between routes. MD is compared with two alternative heuristics that we also develop and an existing method from the literature on a set of 20 test instances. MD produces 15 best solutions and is the top performer. Additional computational experiments on instances with uniform and non-uniform distributions of customers and varying customer-to-vehicle ratios and with real-world data further demonstrate MD’s effectiveness in producing high-quality results.

Suggested Citation

  • Xingyin Wang & Bruce Golden & Edward Wasil, 2015. "The min-max multi-depot vehicle routing problem: heuristics and computational results," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 66(9), pages 1430-1441, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:66:y:2015:i:9:p:1430-1441
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    Cited by:

    1. Zhaoxia Guo & Stein W. Wallace & Michal Kaut, 2019. "Vehicle Routing with Space- and Time-Correlated Stochastic Travel Times: Evaluating the Objective Function," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 31(4), pages 654-670, October.
    2. He, Pengfei & Hao, Jin-Kao, 2023. "Memetic search for the minmax multiple traveling salesman problem with single and multiple depots," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(3), pages 1055-1070.

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