Abstract
We are solving a mail delivery problem by combining exact and heuristic methods. The problem is a tactical routing problem as routes for all postpersons have to be planned in advance for a period of several months. As for many other routing problems, the task is to construct a set of feasible routes serving each customer exactly once at minimum cost. Four different modes (car, moped, bicycle, and walking) are available, but not all customers are accessible by all modes. Thus, the problem is characterized by three interdependent decisions: the clustering of customers into districts, the choice of a mode for each district, and the routing of the postperson through its district. We present a two-phase solution approach that we have implemented and tested on real world instances. Results show that the approach can compete with solutions currently employed and is able to improve them by up to 9.5%.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Baker, E.K., Schaffer, J.R.: Solution improvement heuristics for the vehicle routing and scheduling problem with time window constraints. Amer. J. Math. Management Sci. 6, 261–300 (1986)
Bodin, L., Levy, L.: Scheduling of Local Delivery Carrier Routes for the United States Postal Service. In: Dror, M. (ed.) Arc Routing: Theory, Solutions, and Applications, pp. 419–442. Kluwer, Boston (2000)
Clarke, G., Wright, J.W.: Scheduling of Vehicles from a Central Depot to a Number of Delivery Points. Operations Research 12, 568–581 (1964)
Doerner, K.F., Schmid, V.: Survey: Matheuristics for Rich Vehicle Routing Problems. In: Blesa, M.J., Blum, C., Raidl, G., Roli, A., Sampels, M. (eds.) HM 2010. LNCS, vol. 6373, pp. 206–221. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Fisher, M.L., Jaikumar, R.: A generalized assignment heuristic for vehicle routing. Networks 11, 109–124 (1981)
Golden, B., Raghavan, S., Wasil, E. (eds.): The Vehicle Routing Problem. Latest Advances and New Challenges. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC (2008)
Muter, I., Birbil, S.I., Sahin, G.: Combination of Metaheuristic and Exact Algorithms for Solving Set Covering-Type Optimization Problems. Informs Journal on Computing 22(4), 603–619 (2010)
Oppen, J., Løkketangen, A.: Arc routing in a node routing environment. Computers & Operations Research 33, 1033–1055 (2006)
Orloff, C.S.: A Fundamental Problem in Vehicle Routing. Networks 4, 35–64 (1974)
Renaud, J., Boctor, F.F., Laporte, G.: An Improved Petal Heuristic for the Vehicle Routeing Problem. Journal of the Operational Research Society 47, 329–336 (1996)
Toth, P., Vigo, D. (eds.): The Vehicle Routing Problem. SIAM Monographs on Discrete Mathematics and Applications, Philadelphia (2002)
Wøhlk, S.: Contributions to Arc Routing. PhD thesis, University of Southern Denmark (2006)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Gussmagg-Pfliegl, E., Tricoire, F., Doerner, K.F., Hartl, R.F., Irnich, S. (2011). Heuristics for a Real-World Mail Delivery Problem. In: Di Chio, C., et al. Applications of Evolutionary Computation. EvoApplications 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6625. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20520-0_49
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20520-0_49
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-20519-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-20520-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)