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A metaheuristic for the min–max windy rural postman problem with K vehicles

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Abstract

In this paper we deal with the min–max version of the windy rural postman problem with K vehicles. For this problem, in which the objective is to minimize the length of the longest tour in order to find a set of balanced tours for the vehicles, we present here a metaheuristic that produces very good feasible solutions in reasonable computing times. It is based on the combination of a multi-start procedure with an Iterated Local Search. Extensive computational results on a large set of instances with up to 50 vertices, 184 edges and 5 vehicles are presented. The results are very good, the average gaps with respect to a known lower bound are less than 0.40% for instances with 2 or 3 vehicles and up to 1.60% when 4 or 5 vehicles are considered.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DEIO, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain

    Enrique Benavent & Ángel Corberán

  2. DMA, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    José M. Sanchis

Authors
  1. Enrique Benavent
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  2. Ángel Corberán
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  3. José M. Sanchis
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Correspondence to Ángel Corberán.

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Benavent, E., Corberán, Á. & Sanchis, J.M. A metaheuristic for the min–max windy rural postman problem with K vehicles. Comput Manag Sci 7, 269–287 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10287-009-0119-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10287-009-0119-2

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