Agent-based shipment algorithm for capacitated vehicle routing problem with load balancing

Load building is an important step to make the delivery supply chain efficient. We present a family of load makeup algorithms using market based control strategy, named LoadMarket, in order to build efficient loads where each load consists of a certain number of finished products having destinations. LoadMarket adopts Clark–Wright algorithm for generating initial endowment for Load Traders who cooperate to minimize either total travel distance or the variance with respect to the travel distances of loads by means of the spot market or double-sided auction market mechanism. The efficiency of the LoadMarket algorithms is illustrated using simulation based experiments.