A new VRPPD model and a hybrid heuristic solution approach for e-tailing

Seda Yanik, Burçin Bozkaya, Ronan de Kervenoael

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We analyze a business model for e-supermarkets to enable multi-product sourcing capacity through co-opetition (collaborative competition). The logistics aspect of our approach is to design and execute a network system where “premium” goods are acquired from vendors at multiple locations in the supply network and delivered to customers. Our specific goals are to: (i) investigate the role of premium product offerings in creating critical mass and profit; (ii) develop a model for the multiple-pickup single-delivery vehicle routing problem in the presence of multiple vendors; and (iii) propose a hybrid solution approach. To solve the problem introduced in this paper, we develop a hybrid metaheuristic approach that uses a Genetic Algorithm for vendor selection and allocation, and a modified savings algorithm for the capacitated VRP with multiple pickup, single delivery and time windows (CVRPMPDTW). The proposed Genetic Algorithm guides the search for optimal vendor pickup location decisions, and for each generated solution in the genetic population, a corresponding CVRPMPDTW is solved using the savings algorithm. We validate our solution approach against published VRPTW solutions and also test our algorithm with Solomon instances modified for CVRPMPDTW.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)879-890
Number of pages12
JournalEuropean Journal of Operational Research
Volume236
Issue number3
Early online date23 May 2013
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Aug 2014

Keywords

  • VRP with pickup and deliveries and time windows
  • hybrid heuristic
  • genetic algorithm
  • GIS

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