An intelligent solution for open vehicle routing problem in grain logistics

Abstract

This paper studies the grain logistics open vehicle routing problem (OVRP), in which the vehicles are not required to return to starting depot after completing service, or if they are required, they must return by traveling the same route back. The grain logistics OVRP is a well known hard combinatorial optimization problem, the objective is to minimize the fleet size following routes of minimum distance. We present a hybrid intelligent algorithm for solving the open-version of the well-known open vehicle routing problem (OVRP). Computational results are given for several standard test instances, which show that the proposed procedure obtains better solutions than those found in the open literature, and also indicate that the proposed hybrid method is capable of obtaining optimal solutions very efficiently. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.