Abstract
This paper deals with a real-life vehicle delivery routing problem, which is a seafood product delivery routing problem. Considering the features of the seafood product delivery routing problem, this paper formulated this problem as a multi-depot open vehicle routing problem. Since the multi-depot open vehicle routing problem is a very complex problem, a method is used to reduce the complexity of the problem by changing the multi-depot open vehicle routing problem into an open vehicle routing problem with a dummy central depot in this paper. Then, ant colony optimization is used to solve the problem. To improve the performance of the algorithm, crossover operation and some adaptive strategies are used. Finally, the computational results for the benchmark problems of the multi-depot vehicle routing problem indicate that the proposed ant colony optimization is an effective method to solve the multi-depot vehicle routing problem. Furthermore, the computation results of the seafood product delivery problem from Dalian, China also suggest that the proposed ant colony optimization is feasible to solve the seafood product delivery routing problem.
Highlights
Seafood processing, distribution and selling have been the main roles for a seafood company
The computational results for the benchmark problems of the multi-depot vehicle routing problem indicate that the proposed ant colony optimization is an effective method to solve the multi-depot vehicle routing problem
We have considered the seafood product delivery routing problem in Dalian city as MDOVRP
Summary
Distribution and selling have been the main roles for a seafood company. The fact that the hired vehicles and the depot of the seafood product factories is not simple, led the authors to formulate this real-life problem as a combination of an open VRP(OVRP) [3, 4] and a multi-depot vehicle routing problem (MDVRP) [5, 6]. The concept of OVRP is involved in the formulation of the problem since it allows the hired vehicles to be assigned to routes in which they do not have to return to the seafood product factory after serving the customers, providing the company with the set of routes that minimizes the total distance travelled.
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