IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/flsman/v30y2018i4d10.1007_s10696-016-9265-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An optimization approach for designing routes in metrological control services: a case study

Author

Listed:
  • Jose Carlos Molina

    (Universidad de Sevilla)

  • Ignacio Eguia

    (Universidad de Sevilla)

  • Jesus Racero

    (Universidad de Sevilla)

Abstract

This paper is the first to tackle the problem of designing routes in service companies that are responsible for the metrological control of measuring equipments at customer sites. This real-world problem belongs to the well-known Rich Vehicle Routing Problems which combine multiple attributes that distinguish them from traditional vehicle routing problems. The attributes include fixed heterogeneous fleet of vehicles, time windows for customers and depot, resource synchronization between tours, driver-customer and vehicle-customer constraints, customer priorities and unserved customers. This routing and scheduling problem is modeled with linear programming techniques and solved by a variable neighborhood descent metaheuristic based on a tabu search algorithm with a holding list. A real-life case study faced by a company in the region of Andalusia (Spain) is also presented in this work. The performance of the metaheuristic is compared with the literature for the standard fixed heterogeneous vehicle routing problem. Results obtained on a real case instance improve the solutions implemented by the company.

Suggested Citation

  • Jose Carlos Molina & Ignacio Eguia & Jesus Racero, 2018. "An optimization approach for designing routes in metrological control services: a case study," Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, Springer, vol. 30(4), pages 924-952, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:flsman:v:30:y:2018:i:4:d:10.1007_s10696-016-9265-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s10696-016-9265-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10696-016-9265-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10696-016-9265-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. F-H Liu & S-Y Shen, 1999. "The fleet size and mix vehicle routing problem with time windows," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 50(7), pages 721-732, July.
    2. Michael Drexl, 2012. "Synchronization in Vehicle Routing---A Survey of VRPs with Multiple Synchronization Constraints," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(3), pages 297-316, August.
    3. Lahyani, Rahma & Khemakhem, Mahdi & Semet, Frédéric, 2015. "Rich vehicle routing problems: From a taxonomy to a definition," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 241(1), pages 1-14.
    4. Vidal, Thibaut & Crainic, Teodor Gabriel & Gendreau, Michel & Prins, Christian, 2013. "Heuristics for multi-attribute vehicle routing problems: A survey and synthesis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 231(1), pages 1-21.
    5. Pierre Hansen & Nenad Mladenović & José Moreno Pérez, 2010. "Variable neighbourhood search: methods and applications," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 175(1), pages 367-407, March.
    6. Irnich, S. & Schneider, M. & Vigo, D., 2014. "Four Variants of the Vehicle Routing Problem," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 63514, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    7. Yuan, Shuai & Skinner, Bradley & Huang, Shoudong & Liu, Dikai, 2013. "A new crossover approach for solving the multiple travelling salesmen problem using genetic algorithms," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 228(1), pages 72-82.
    8. Julia Rieck & Jürgen Zimmermann, 2010. "A new mixed integer linear model for a rich vehicle routing problem with docking constraints," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 337-358, December.
    9. Lau, Hoong Chuin & Sim, Melvyn & Teo, Kwong Meng, 2003. "Vehicle routing problem with time windows and a limited number of vehicles," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 148(3), pages 559-569, August.
    10. Christophe Duhamel & Jean-Yves Potvin & Jean-Marc Rousseau, 1997. "A Tabu Search Heuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls and Time Windows," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(1), pages 49-59, February.
    11. G. A. Croes, 1958. "A Method for Solving Traveling-Salesman Problems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(6), pages 791-812, December.
    12. Andrew Lim & Xingwen Zhang, 2007. "A Two-Stage Heuristic with Ejection Pools and Generalized Ejection Chains for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 19(3), pages 443-457, August.
    13. Bektas, Tolga, 2006. "The multiple traveling salesman problem: an overview of formulations and solution procedures," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 209-219, June.
    14. Éric Taillard & Philippe Badeau & Michel Gendreau & François Guertin & Jean-Yves Potvin, 1997. "A Tabu Search Heuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Soft Time Windows," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 170-186, May.
    15. Martin W. P. Savelsbergh, 1992. "The Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows: Minimizing Route Duration," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 4(2), pages 146-154, May.
    16. Marius M. Solomon, 1987. "Algorithms for the Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problems with Time Window Constraints," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 35(2), pages 254-265, April.
    17. Koç, Çağrı & Bektaş, Tolga & Jabali, Ola & Laporte, Gilbert, 2016. "Thirty years of heterogeneous vehicle routing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 249(1), pages 1-21.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hailin Wu & Fengming Tao & Bo Yang, 2020. "Optimization of Vehicle Routing for Waste Collection and Transportation," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(14), pages 1-26, July.
    2. Jose Carlos Molina & Ignacio Eguia & Jesus Racero, 2019. "Reducing pollutant emissions in a waste collection vehicle routing problem using a variable neighborhood tabu search algorithm: a case study," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 27(2), pages 253-287, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jose Carlos Molina & Ignacio Eguia & Jesus Racero, 2019. "Reducing pollutant emissions in a waste collection vehicle routing problem using a variable neighborhood tabu search algorithm: a case study," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 27(2), pages 253-287, July.
    2. Puca Huachi Vaz Penna & Anand Subramanian & Luiz Satoru Ochi & Thibaut Vidal & Christian Prins, 2019. "A hybrid heuristic for a broad class of vehicle routing problems with heterogeneous fleet," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 273(1), pages 5-74, February.
    3. Mohamed Cissé & Semih Yalçindag & Yannick Kergosien & Evren Sahin & Christophe Lenté & Andrea Matta, 2017. "OR problems related to Home Health Care: A review of relevant routing and scheduling problems," Post-Print hal-01736714, HAL.
    4. Schneider, Michael, 2016. "The vehicle-routing problem with time windows and driver-specific times," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 250(1), pages 101-119.
    5. Schneider, M., 2016. "The vehicle-routing problem with time windows and driver-specific times," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 65941, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    6. Baals, Julian & Emde, Simon & Turkensteen, Marcel, 2023. "Minimizing earliness-tardiness costs in supplier networks—A just-in-time truck routing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 707-741.
    7. Sana Jawarneh & Salwani Abdullah, 2015. "Sequential Insertion Heuristic with Adaptive Bee Colony Optimisation Algorithm for Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-23, July.
    8. Paraskevopoulos, Dimitris C. & Laporte, Gilbert & Repoussis, Panagiotis P. & Tarantilis, Christos D., 2017. "Resource constrained routing and scheduling: Review and research prospects," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 263(3), pages 737-754.
    9. Olli Bräysy & Michel Gendreau, 2005. "Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows, Part II: Metaheuristics," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(1), pages 119-139, February.
    10. Andrew Lim & Xingwen Zhang, 2007. "A Two-Stage Heuristic with Ejection Pools and Generalized Ejection Chains for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 19(3), pages 443-457, August.
    11. Michael Drexl, 2018. "On the One-to-One Pickup-and-Delivery Problem with Time Windows and Trailers," Working Papers 1816, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    12. Sungwon Lee & Taesung Hwang, 2018. "Estimating Emissions from Regional Freight Delivery under Different Urban Development Scenarios," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-14, April.
    13. Vidal, Thibaut & Crainic, Teodor Gabriel & Gendreau, Michel & Prins, Christian, 2013. "Heuristics for multi-attribute vehicle routing problems: A survey and synthesis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 231(1), pages 1-21.
    14. Christos D. Tarantilis & Afroditi K. Anagnostopoulou & Panagiotis P. Repoussis, 2013. "Adaptive Path Relinking for Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problems with Product Returns," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(3), pages 356-379, August.
    15. Michael Drexl, 2021. "On the one-to-one pickup-and-delivery problem with time windows and trailers," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 29(3), pages 1115-1162, September.
    16. Junlong Zhang & William Lam & Bi Chen, 2013. "A Stochastic Vehicle Routing Problem with Travel Time Uncertainty: Trade-Off Between Cost and Customer Service," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 471-496, December.
    17. Fröhlich von Elmbach, Alexander & Scholl, Armin & Walter, Rico, 2019. "Minimizing the maximal ergonomic burden in intra-hospital patient transportation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(3), pages 840-854.
    18. Christian Brandstätter, 2021. "A metaheuristic algorithm and structured analysis for the Line-haul Feeder Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 29(1), pages 247-289, March.
    19. Lagos, Felipe & Pereira, Jordi, 2024. "Multi-armed bandit-based hyper-heuristics for combinatorial optimization problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 312(1), pages 70-91.
    20. José Brandão, 2017. "Iterated Local Search Algorithm for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls and Soft Time Windows," Working Papers REM 2017/10, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:flsman:v:30:y:2018:i:4:d:10.1007_s10696-016-9265-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.