EURO 2025 Leeds
Abstract Submission

2249. Multi-Route Optimization in Cyclic Load-Dependent Vehicle Routing: A Two-Strategy Approach

Invited abstract in session WB-58: Heuristics for Vehicle Routing 1, stream Vehicle Routing and Logistics.

Wednesday, 10:30-12:00
Room: Liberty 1.13

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. mahshid yadegari
university of Le havre normandy
2. Sebastian Urrutia
University Molde
3. Andréa Cynthia Santos
Normandie, Normandie Université

Abstract

This research investigates new strategies for the Multiple Routes Cyclic Vehicle Routing Problem in the context of maritime transportation. The problem is periodically delivering a single product type from a central depot to a set of customer ports via several routes, aiming to optimize the average work performed associated with vehicle load through the routes. All the customer ports dedicated to each route are visited exactly one time when the vehicles return to the depot. By investigating the impact of the load factor on overall transportation costs, we proposed studying the cyclic routing problem by focusing on the direction of the route and evaluating the performance of obtained routes regarding two different approaches: the Unidirectional Multiple Routes Cyclic Load-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem and the Bidirectional Multiple-Routes Cyclic Load-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem. In the unidirectional strategy, the route direction remains constant across multiple periods, while in the bidirectional approach, the route direction alternates in each period. To address these problems, we propose two Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) models, which are solved using a commercial solver to obtain optimal values for several benchmark instances. Then, we employ an approximate approach to solve and analyze medium to larger-scale instances. We aim to demonstrate the potential of these strategies for their practical implementation through a precise comparison.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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