Capacitated Multi-depot Vehicle Routing Problem with Inter-depot Routes

Abstract

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-language: FA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">In this paper, we study the multi-depot vehicle<br />routing problem with inter-depot routes, in which the vehicles can replenish at<br />intermediate depots. Vehicles leave the origin depot with load on-board and<br />serve customers until out of load. They may visit an intermediate depot to<br />replenish and finally return to the origin depot, completing their route. We<br />initiate a mathematical mixed integer programming model for this problem. The<br />objective of the problem is to find routes for vehicles at a minimal cost in terms<br />of total travel cost and replenishments cost at intermediate depots, without<br />violating the capacity constraints of the vehicles. The solution to the problem<br />is obtained through CPLEX solver in commercial software GAMS 23.5, Genetic<br />Algorithm and Tabu Search algorithms. Computational results indicate the<br />effectiveness of the proposed algorithms in terms of solution time and quality<br />of results.</span>