A Library of Local Search Heuristics for the Vehicle Routing Problem

Journal Article · Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2010 · Mathematical Programming Computation

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s12532-010-0013-5· OSTI ID:979334

Groer, Christopher S ^[1]; Golden, Bruce ^[2]; Edward, Wasil ^[3]

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1. ORNL
2. University of Maryland
3. American University

The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a difficult and well-studied combinatorial optimization problem. Real-world instances of the VRP can contain hundreds and even thousands of customer locations and can involve many complicating constraints, necessitating the use of heuristic methods. We present a software library of local search heuristics that allow one to quickly generate good solutions to VRP instances. The code has a logical, object-oriented design and uses efficient data structures to store and modify solutions. The core of the library is the implementation of seven local search operators that share a similar interface and are designed to be extended to handle additional options with minimal code change. The code is well-documented, is straightforward to compile, and is freely available for download at http://sites.google.com/site/vrphlibrary/ . The distribution of the code contains several applications that can be used to generate solutions to instances of the capacitated VRP.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: DE-AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 979334
• Journal Information: Mathematical Programming Computation, Journal Name: Mathematical Programming Computation
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

97 MATHEMATICAL METHODS AND COMPUTING
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS//MATHEMATICS, COMPUTING, AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
DESIGN
DISTRIBUTION
IMPLEMENTATION
OPTIMIZATION
ROUTING
combinatorial optimization
local search
heuristics
vehicle routing problem