A CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING HEURISTIC FOR A HETEROGENEOUS VEHICLE ROUTING PROBLEM WITH SPLIT DELIVERIES

This article considers fresh goods distribution of a retail chain store in Turkey. The problem is formulated as a vehicle routing problem with a heterogeneous fleet for which no exact algorithm has ever been designed to solve it. A fast and effective algorithm based on constraint programming is prop...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied artificial intelligence 2010-04, Vol.24 (4), p.277-294
Main Authors: Ozfirat, Pinar Mizrak, Ozkarahan, Irem
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Artificial intelligence
Benchmarking
Benchmarks
Comparative analysis
Distribution
Expert systems
Heuristic
Programming
Retail stores
Routing
Stores
Strategy
Vehicles
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Summary:This article considers fresh goods distribution of a retail chain store in Turkey. The problem is formulated as a vehicle routing problem with a heterogeneous fleet for which no exact algorithm has ever been designed to solve it. A fast and effective algorithm based on constraint programming is proposed for the solution. The procedure is tested on some of the benchmark problems in literature. The real-life case is first solved assuming that delivery of a customer cannot be split between vehicles. Then it is resolved considering split deliveries. Solutions of both strategies are compared with the current performance of the firm to determine a distribution strategy. Results indicate considerable improvement in the performance of the firm.
ISSN:0883-9514
1087-6545
DOI:10.1080/08839511003715196