Article ID: | iaor20121525 |
Volume: | 39 |
Issue: | 10 |
Start Page Number: | 2300 |
End Page Number: | 2309 |
Publication Date: | Oct 2012 |
Journal: | Computers and Operations Research |
Authors: | Guerriero F, Grandinetti L, Lagan D, Pisacane O |
Keywords: | scheduling, vehicle routing & scheduling, programming: multiple criteria, heuristics |
The Multi‐objective Undirected Capacitated Arc Routing Problem (MUCARP) is the optimization problem aimed at finding the best strategy for servicing a subset of clients localized along the links of a logistic network, by using a fleet of vehicles and optimizing more than one objective. In general, the first goal consists in minimizing the total transportation cost, and in this case the problem brings back to the well‐known Undirected Capacitated Arc Routing Problem (UCARP). The motivation behind the study of the MUCARP lies in the study of real situations where companies working in the logistic distribution field deal with complex operational strategies, in which different actors (trucks, drivers, customers) have to be allocated within an unified framework by taking into account opposite needs and different employment contracts. All the previous considerations lead to the MUCARP as a benchmark optimization problem for modeling practical situations. In this paper, the MUCARP is heuristically tackled. In particular, three competitive objectives are minimized at the same time: the total transportation cost, the longest route cost (