IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ortrsc/v41y2007i2p253-264.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Exact Approach for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Two-Dimensional Loading Constraints

Author

Listed:
  • Manuel Iori

    (DEIS, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informatica e Sistemistica, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy)

  • Juan-José Salazar-González

    (DEIOC, Departamento de Estadística, Investigación Operativa y Computación, Universidad de La Laguna, 38271 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain)

  • Daniele Vigo

    (DEIS, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informatica e Sistemistica, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy)

Abstract

We consider a special case of the symmetric capacitated vehicle routing problem, in which a fleet of K identical vehicles must serve n customers, each with a given demand consisting in a set of rectangular two-dimensional weighted items. The vehicles have a two-dimensional loading surface and a maximum weight capacity. The aim is to find a partition of the customers into routes of minimum total cost such that, for each vehicle, the weight capacity is taken into account and a feasible two-dimensional allocation of the items into the loading surface exists.The problem has several practical applications in freight transportation, and it is (N-script)(P-script)-hard in the strong sense. We propose an exact approach, based on a branch-and-cut algorithm, for the minimization of the routing cost that iteratively calls a branch-and-bound algorithm for checking the feasibility of the loadings. Heuristics are also used to improve the overall performance of the algorithm. The effectiveness of the approach is shown by means of computational results.

Suggested Citation

  • Manuel Iori & Juan-José Salazar-González & Daniele Vigo, 2007. "An Exact Approach for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Two-Dimensional Loading Constraints," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(2), pages 253-264, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:41:y:2007:i:2:p:253-264
    DOI: 10.1287/trsc.1060.0165
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/trsc.1060.0165
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/trsc.1060.0165?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gouveia, Luis, 1995. "A result on projection for the vehicle routing ptoblem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 85(3), pages 610-624, September.
    2. Sándor P. Fekete & Jörg Schepers, 2004. "A General Framework for Bounds for Higher-Dimensional Orthogonal Packing Problems," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 60(2), pages 311-329, October.
    3. Jonathan F. Bard & George Kontoravdis & Gang Yu, 2002. "A Branch-and-Cut Procedure for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(2), pages 250-269, May.
    4. Pisinger, David, 2002. "Heuristics for the container loading problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 382-392, September.
    5. Gerhard Reinelt, 1991. "TSPLIB—A Traveling Salesman Problem Library," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 3(4), pages 376-384, November.
    6. Silvano Martello & David Pisinger & Daniele Vigo, 2000. "The Three-Dimensional Bin Packing Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 48(2), pages 256-267, April.
    7. Araque, J. & Hall, L. & Magnanti, T., 1990. "Capacitated trees, capacitated routing, and associated polyhedra," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 1990061, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    8. Silvano Martello & Daniele Vigo, 1998. "Exact Solution of the Two-Dimensional Finite Bin Packing Problem," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(3), pages 388-399, March.
    9. Chen, C. S. & Lee, S. M. & Shen, Q. S., 1995. "An analytical model for the container loading problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 68-76, January.
    10. Sándor P. Fekete & Jörg Schepers & Jan C. van der Veen, 2007. "An Exact Algorithm for Higher-Dimensional Orthogonal Packing," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 55(3), pages 569-587, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bonet Filella, Guillem & Trivella, Alessio & Corman, Francesco, 2023. "Modeling soft unloading constraints in the multi-drop container loading problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 308(1), pages 336-352.
    2. Bortfeldt, Andreas & Wäscher, Gerhard, 2013. "Constraints in container loading – A state-of-the-art review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 229(1), pages 1-20.
    3. R. Baldacci & E. Hadjiconstantinou & A. Mingozzi, 2004. "An Exact Algorithm for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem Based on a Two-Commodity Network Flow Formulation," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 52(5), pages 723-738, October.
    4. Iori, Manuel & de Lima, Vinícius L. & Martello, Silvano & Miyazawa, Flávio K. & Monaci, Michele, 2021. "Exact solution techniques for two-dimensional cutting and packing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 289(2), pages 399-415.
    5. F. Parreño & R. Alvarez-Valdes & J. Oliveira & J. Tamarit, 2010. "A hybrid GRASP/VND algorithm for two- and three-dimensional bin packing," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 203-220, September.
    6. Schmid, Verena & Doerner, Karl F. & Laporte, Gilbert, 2013. "Rich routing problems arising in supply chain management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 224(3), pages 435-448.
    7. Gregory S. Taylor & Yupo Chan & Ghulam Rasool, 2017. "A three-dimensional bin-packing model: exact multicriteria solution and computational complexity," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 251(1), pages 397-427, April.
    8. Liao, Chung-Shou & Hsu, Chia-Hong, 2013. "New lower bounds for the three-dimensional orthogonal bin packing problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 244-252.
    9. Teodor Gabriel Crainic & Guido Perboli & Roberto Tadei, 2008. "Extreme Point-Based Heuristics for Three-Dimensional Bin Packing," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 20(3), pages 368-384, August.
    10. Wu, Yong & Li, Wenkai & Goh, Mark & de Souza, Robert, 2010. "Three-dimensional bin packing problem with variable bin height," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 202(2), pages 347-355, April.
    11. Lodi, Andrea & Martello, Silvano & Monaci, Michele, 2002. "Two-dimensional packing problems: A survey," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 241-252, September.
    12. H-L Li & J-F Tsai & N-Z Hu, 2003. "A distributed global optimization method for packing problems," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 54(4), pages 419-425, April.
    13. Manuel Iori & Silvano Martello, 2010. "Routing problems with loading constraints," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 18(1), pages 4-27, July.
    14. Ardjmand, Ehsan & Sanei Bajgiran, Omid & Rahman, Shakil & Weckman, Gary R. & Young, William A., 2018. "A multi-objective model for order cartonization and fulfillment center assignment in the e-tail/retail industry," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 16-34.
    15. Andreas Bortfeldt & Sabine Jungmann, 2012. "A tree search algorithm for solving the multi-dimensional strip packing problem with guillotine cutting constraint," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 196(1), pages 53-71, July.
    16. Liu, Weimiao & Deng, Tianhu & Li, Jianbin, 2019. "Product packing and stacking under uncertainty: A robust approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 277(3), pages 903-917.
    17. Aardal, K.I. & van Hoesel, S., 1995. "Polyhedral Techniques in Combinatorial Optimization," Other publications TiSEM ed028a07-eb6a-4c8d-8f21-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    18. Richard Korf & Michael Moffitt & Martha Pollack, 2010. "Optimal rectangle packing," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 261-295, September.
    19. Krzysztof Fleszar, 2016. "An Exact Algorithm for the Two-Dimensional Stage-Unrestricted Guillotine Cutting/Packing Decision Problem," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 28(4), pages 703-720, November.
    20. Clausen, Tommy & Hjorth, Allan Nordlunde & Nielsen, Morten & Pisinger, David, 2010. "The off-line group seat reservation problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 207(3), pages 1244-1253, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:41:y:2007:i:2:p:253-264. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.