Operations Research 2025
Abstract Submission

2412. Neural Deconstruction Search for Vehicle Routing Problems

Invited abstract in session WB-12: AI and Optimization for Warehousing, stream Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Optimization.

Wednesday, 10:45-12:15
Room: H10

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. André Hottung
Decision and Operation Technologies, Bielefeld University
2. Paula Wong-Chung
University of British Columbia
3. Kevin Tierney
Business Decisions and Analytics, University of Vienna

Abstract

Autoregressive construction approaches generate solutions to vehicle routing problems in a step-by-step fashion, leading to high-quality solutions that are nearing the performance achieved by handcrafted operations research techniques. We challenge the conventional paradigm of sequential solution construction and introduce an iterative search framework where solutions are instead deconstructed by a neural policy. Throughout the search, the neural policy collaborates with a simple greedy insertion algorithm to rebuild the deconstructed solutions. Our approach matches or surpasses the performance of state-of-the-art operations research methods across three challenging vehicle routing problems of various problem sizes.

Keywords

Status: accepted


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