Simulated Annealing with Restart Strategy for the Path Cover Problem with Time Windows
This research presents a variant of the vehicle routing problem known as the path cover problem with time windows (PCPTW), in which each vehicle starts with a particular customer and finishes its route at another customer. The vehicles serve each customer within the customer’s time windows. PCPTW is...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2021-07-01
|
| Series: | Mathematics |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/9/14/1625 |
| Summary: | This research presents a variant of the vehicle routing problem known as the path cover problem with time windows (PCPTW), in which each vehicle starts with a particular customer and finishes its route at another customer. The vehicles serve each customer within the customer’s time windows. PCPTW is motivated by a practical strategy for companies to reduce operational cost by hiring freelance workers, thus allowing workers to directly service customers without reporting to the office. A mathematical programming model is formulated for the problem. This research also proposes a simulated annealing heuristic with restart strategy (SARS) to solve PCPTW and test it on several benchmark datasets. Computational results indicate that the proposed SARS effectively solves PCPTW. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2227-7390 |