A matheuristic algorithm for solving the vehicle routing problem with cross-docking

Abstract

This paper studies the integration of the vehicle routing problem with cross-docking, namely VRPCD. The aim is to find a set of routes to deliver single products from a set of suppliers to a set of customers through a cross-dock facility, such that the operational and transportation costs are minimized, without violating the vehicle capacity and time horizon constraints. A two-phase matheuristic approach that uses the routes of the local optima of an adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) as columns in a set-partitioning formulation of the VRPCD is designed. This matheuristic outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms in solving a subset of benchmark instances.