Skip to main content

Improved Branch-Cut-and-Price for Capacitated Vehicle Routing

  • Conference paper
Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization (IPCO 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8494))

Abstract

The best performing exact algorithms for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem are based on the combination of cut and column generation. Some authors could obtain reduced duality gaps by also using a restricted number of cuts over the Master LP variables, stopping separation before the pricing becomes prohibitively hard. This work introduces a technique for greatly decreasing the impact on the pricing of the Subset Row Cuts, thus allowing much more such cuts to be added. The newly proposed Branch-Cut-and-Price algorithm also incorporates and combines for the first time (often in an improved way) several elements found in previous works, like route enumeration and strong branching. All the instances used for benchmarking exact algorithms, with up to 199 customers, were solved to optimality. Moreover, some larger instances with up to 360 customers, only considered before by heuristic methods, were solved too.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Baldacci, R., Christofides, N., Mingozzi, A.: An exact algorithm for the vehicle routing problem based on the set partitioning formulation with additional cuts. Mathematical Programming 115(2), 351–385 (2008)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  2. Baldacci, R., Mingozzi, A., Roberti, R.: New route relaxation and pricing strategies for the vehicle routing problem. Operations Research 59(5), 1269–1283 (2011)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  3. Christofides, N., Mingozzi, A., Toth, P.: Exact algorithms for the vehicle routing problem, based on spanning tree and shortest path relaxations. Math. Prog. 20, 255–282 (1981)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  4. Contardo, C.: A new exact algorithm for the multi-depot vehicle routing problem under capacity and route length constraints. Technical report, Archipel-UQAM 5078, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Fukasawa, R., Longo, H., Lysgaard, J., Poggi de Aragão, M., Reis, M., Uchoa, E., Werneck, R.F.: Robust branch-and-cut-and-price for the capacitated vehicle routing problem. Mathematical Programming 106(3), 491–511 (2006)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  6. Golden, B., Wasil, E., Kelly, J., Chao, I.: The impact of metaheuristics on solving the vehicle routing problem: Algorithms, problem sets, and computational results. In: Fleet Management and Logistics, pp. 33–56. Springer (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Irnich, S., Desaulniers, G., Desrosiers, J., Hadjar, A.: Path-reduced costs for eliminating arcs in routing and scheduling. INFORMS Journal on Computing 22(2), 297–313 (2010)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  8. Jepsen, M., Petersen, B., Spoorendonk, S., Pisinger, D.: Subset-row inequalities applied to the vehicle-routing problem with time windows. Oper. Research 56, 497–511 (2008)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  9. Lysgaard, J., Letchford, A., Eglese, R.: A new branch-and-cut algorithm for the capacitated vehicle routing problem. Mathematical Programming 100, 423–445 (2004)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  10. Martinelli, R., Pecin, D., Poggi, M.: Efficient elementary and restricted non-elementary route pricing for routing problems (2012) (submitted)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Pessoa, A., Poggi de Aragão, M., Uchoa, E.: Robust branch-cut-and-price algorithms for vehicle routing problems. In: Golden, B., Raghavan, S., Wasil, E. (eds.) The Vehicle Routing Problem: Latest Advances and New Challenges, pp. 297–325. Springer (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Pessoa, A., Sadykov, R., Uchoa, E., Vanderbeck, F.: In-out separation and column generation stabilization by dual price smoothing. In: Bonifaci, V., Demetrescu, C., Marchetti-Spaccamela, A. (eds.) SEA 2013. LNCS, vol. 7933, pp. 354–365. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Pessoa, A., Uchoa, E., Poggi de Aragão, M., Rodrigues, R.: Exact algorithm over an arc-time-indexed formulation for parallel machine scheduling problems. Mathematical Programming Computation 2(3-4), 259–290 (2010)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  14. Poggi de Aragão, M., Uchoa, E.: Integer program reformulation for robust branch-and-cut-and-price. In: Annals of Mathematical Programming in Rio, Búzios, Brazil, pp. 56–61 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Righini, G., Salani, M.: Symmetry helps: bounded bi-directional dynamic programming for the elementary shortest path problem with resource constraints. Discrete Optimization 3(3), 255–273 (2006)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  16. Røpke, S.: Branching decisions in branch-and-cut-and-price algorithms for vehicle routing problems. Presentation in Column Generation 2012 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Pecin, D., Pessoa, A., Poggi, M., Uchoa, E. (2014). Improved Branch-Cut-and-Price for Capacitated Vehicle Routing. In: Lee, J., Vygen, J. (eds) Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization. IPCO 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8494. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07557-0_33

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07557-0_33

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-07556-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-07557-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics