A hierarchical hybrid meta-heuristic approach to coping with large practical multi-depot VRP

Abstract

Under amazing increase in markets and certain demand on qualified service in the delivery system, global logistic optimization is becoming a keen interest to provide an essential infrastructure coping with modern competitive prospects. As a key technology for such deployment, we have been engaged in the practical studies on vehicle routing problem (VRP) in terms of Weber model, and developed a hybrid approach of meta-heuristic methods and the graph algorithm of minimum cost flow problem. This paper extends such idea to multi-depot VRP so that we can give a more general framework available for various real world applications including those in green or low carbon logistics. We show the developed procedure can handle various types of problem, i.e., delivery, direct pickup, and drop by pickup problems in a common framework. Numerical experiments have been carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Moreover, to enhance usability of the method, Google Maps API is applied to retrieve real distance data and visualize the numerical result on the map.