Article ID: | iaor20117881 |
Volume: | 19 |
Issue: | 3 |
Start Page Number: | 359 |
End Page Number: | 369 |
Publication Date: | Sep 2011 |
Journal: | Central European Journal of Operations Research |
Authors: | Matis Peter, Kohni Michal |
Keywords: | distribution, programming: travelling salesman, supply & supply chains |
Providers of logistic services in recent years are under a big pressure to lower their expenses. One way to accomplish this task is centralization of logistic activities. This creates a distribution centers with a large number of customers. The capacity or time of one delivery person is limited, but, at the same time, it usually serves many customers. This problem is often called a Street Routing Problem (SRP). This paper is a survey of aggregation heuristics that can be used for a solution of Very Large SRP (VLSRP). Performance of heuristics has been evaluated based on real data. This paper presents several approximations of length for a SRP with mixed transportation mode and compares them with published approximations used for Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) or Traveling Salesman Problems (TSP). The method was tested in seven real world instances ranging from 11000 to 29000 customers. Several aggregation methods including two new are presented and compared for the creation of delivery districts. New measurements for the quality of aggregation are created and tested on real data with all discussed aggregation methods.