GRASP-VNS for a periodic VRP with time windows to deal with milk collection

Abstract

This paper considers the planning of the collection of fresh milk from local farms with a fleet of refrigerated vehicles. The problem is formulated as a version of the Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows. The objective function is oriented to the quality of service by minimizing the service times to the customers within their time windows. We developed a hybrid metaheuristic that combines GRASP and VNS to find solutions. In order to help the hybrid GRASP-VNS find high-quality and feasible solutions, we consider infeasible solutions during the search using different penalty functions.