Article ID: | iaor20125414 |
Volume: | 40 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 70 |
End Page Number: | 79 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2013 |
Journal: | Computers and Operations Research |
Authors: | Toth Paolo, Escobar John Willmer, Linfati Rodrigo |
Keywords: | vehicle routing & scheduling, heuristics, programming: multiple criteria, combinatorial optimization |
In this paper, we propose a two‐phase hybrid heuristic algorithm to solve the capacitated location‐routing problem (CLRP). The CLRP combines depot location and routing decisions. We are given on input a set of identical vehicles (each having a capacity and a fixed cost), a set of depots with restricted capacities and opening costs, and a set of customers with deterministic demands. The problem consists of determining the depots to be opened, the customers and the vehicles to be assigned to each open depot, and the routes to be performed to fulfill the demand of the customers. The objective is to minimize the sum of the costs of the open depots, of the fixed cost associated with the used vehicles, and of the variable traveling costs related to the performed routes. In the proposed hybrid heuristic algorithm, after a