eprintid: 4061
rev_number: 15
eprint_status: archive
userid: 365
dir: disk0/00/00/40/61
datestamp: 2020-09-14 02:55:49
lastmod: 2020-09-14 02:55:49
status_changed: 2020-09-14 02:55:49
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Ha, Minh Hoang
creators_name: Nguyen, Tat Dat
creators_name: Nguyen, Duy Thinh
creators_name: Pham, Hoang Giang
creators_name: Do, Thuy
creators_name: Rousseau, Louis-Martin
creators_id: minhhoang.ha@vnu.edu.vn
title: A new constraint programming model and a linear programming-based adaptive large neighborhood search for the vehicle routing problem with synchronization constraints
ispublished: pub
subjects: IT
subjects: Scopus
subjects: isi
subjects: transportation
divisions: fac_fit
abstract: We consider a vehicle routing problem which seeks to minimize cost subject to time window and synchronization constraints. In this problem, the fleet of vehicles is categorized into regular and special vehicles. Some customers require both vehicles’ services, whose service start times at the customer are synchronized. Despite its important real-world application, this problem has rarely been studied in the literature. To solve the problem, we propose a Constraint Programming (CP) model and an Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search (ALNS) in which the design of insertion operators is based on solving linear programming (LP) models to check the insertion feasibility. A number of acceleration techniques is also proposed to significantly reduce the computational time. The computational experiments show that our new CP model finds better solutions than an existing CP-based ALNS, when used on small instances with 25 customers and with a much shorter running time. Our LP-based ALNS dominates the CP-based ALNS, in terms of solution quality, when it provides solutions with better objective values, on average, for all instance classes. This demonstrates the advantage of using linear programming instead of constraint programming when dealing with a variant of vehicle routing problems with relatively tight constraints, which is often considered to be more favorable for CP-based methods. We also adapt our algorithm to solve a well-studied variant of the problem, and the obtained results show that the algorithm provides good solutions as state-of-the-art approaches and improves four best known solutions.
date: 2020
date_type: published
publisher: Elsevier
official_url: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/computers-and-operations-research
full_text_status: public
publication: Computers & Operations Research
volume: 124
refereed: TRUE
issn: 0305-0548
citation:   Ha, Minh Hoang and Nguyen, Tat Dat and Nguyen, Duy Thinh and Pham, Hoang Giang and Do, Thuy and Rousseau, Louis-Martin  (2020) A new constraint programming model and a linear programming-based adaptive large neighborhood search for the vehicle routing problem with synchronization constraints.  Computers & Operations Research, 124 .    ISSN 0305-0548     
document_url: https://eprints.uet.vnu.edu.vn/eprints/id/eprint/4061/2/COR-H%C3%A0%20et%20al%202020.pdf