Abstract
The Mobile Production Vehicle Routing Problem (MoP-VRP) is a new variant of the Vehicle Routing Problem in which production takes place on vehicles en route to customers. The objective is to determine
both the production schedule and routing sequence for the vehicles such that the total travel cost and service delays are minimized. Due to the high complexity of simultaneous production and routing planning, CPLEX can only solve instances with 15 customers and a few with 20 customers to optimality.
This work presents an enhanced model for this problem and a branch and price algorithm to find optimal solutions for larger instances. The algorithm incorporates specially designed effective dominance rules and
different heuristic pricing methods to efficiently find the columns with negative reduced costs for the pricing problem. We have tested the model and the B&P on benchmark instances and have successfully solved many medium-size instances (with up to 50 customers) that have not been solved to optimality in the literature.
both the production schedule and routing sequence for the vehicles such that the total travel cost and service delays are minimized. Due to the high complexity of simultaneous production and routing planning, CPLEX can only solve instances with 15 customers and a few with 20 customers to optimality.
This work presents an enhanced model for this problem and a branch and price algorithm to find optimal solutions for larger instances. The algorithm incorporates specially designed effective dominance rules and
different heuristic pricing methods to efficiently find the columns with negative reduced costs for the pricing problem. We have tested the model and the B&P on benchmark instances and have successfully solved many medium-size instances (with up to 50 customers) that have not been solved to optimality in the literature.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Lecture Notes in Computer Science |
| Publisher | Springer |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 2025 |