| Article ID: | iaor20131081 |
| Volume: | 47 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Start Page Number: | 23 |
| End Page Number: | 37 |
| Publication Date: | Feb 2013 |
| Journal: | Transportation Science |
| Authors: | Ropke Stefan, Spoorendonk Simon, Jepsen Mads |
| Keywords: | networks: flow |
This paper presents an exact method for solving the symmetric two‐echelon capacitated vehicle routing problem, a transportation problem concerned with the distribution of goods from a depot to a set of customers through a set of satellite locations. The presented method is based on an edge flow model that is a relaxation and provides a valid lower bound. A specialized branching scheme is employed to obtain feasible solutions. Out of a test set of 93 instances the algorithm is able to solve 47 to optimality, surpassing previous exact algorithms.