Heuristics for the traveling purchaser problem

Abstract

This article deals with two versions of the traveling purchaser problem. In the uncapacitated version, the number of units of a given product available at any market where it is sold is either larger than or equal to the demand. In the capacitated version, the availability may be smaller than the demand. This study extends some known heuristics and presents some new ones capable of solving either version of the problem. The new heuristics are compared to each other and to some previous heuristics. Computational results confirm the quality of the proposed heuristics. Scope and purpose In the traveling purchaser problem an agent must visit a set of outlets in order to satisfy at minimum cost demand requirement for given products. The cost is made up of two elements: travel cost between markets and purchase cost. This problem is frequently faced by shoppers but it also has applications in the area of production scheduling. Since it is hard to solve to optimality, the authors propose efficient heuristics capable of producing near-optimal solutions.