Tactical Vehicle Routing is concerned with a more general view on the otherwise operative planning in distribution logistics. In this formulation, several periods of delivery (and possible: pick-up) have to be considered at once. Hence, delivery dates are variables that must be decided.
Effectively, this leads to multi-period VRP models, and the overall solution lies in between the scheduling of activities over a planning horizon on the one hand, and the solution of the isolated planning periods (typically: days/ shifts) on the other hand.
VeRoLog Solver Challenge 2016–2017
„Vehicle Routing with with scarce, reusable equipment“ has been used to described a multi-period vehicle routing problem, in which equipment is delivered/ rented out to customers for a certain duration. This implies that the delivered equipment has to be picked up in some later period. Picking up comes with the option of transporting the equipment to another customer (in contrast to returning it to the depot), which captures an aspect of „reusability“. A more detailed problem description is available here.
The above mentioned problem has been put forward as a case for the 2016–2017 Implementation Challenge of the EURO Working Group on Vehicle Routing and Logistics Optimization. We made a contribution to this competition, which ranked first.
VeRoLog Solver Challenge 2019
In another competition, i.e. the more recent implementation challenge of the EURO Working Group on Vehicle Routing and Logistics Optimization, our work was awarded the second prize. Effectively, this contribution is a generalization of the 2016-2017 approach. We believe it to be more applicable to a wider range of similar problems while at the same time, sacrificing effectiveness of the employed methods/ algorithms as little as possible.
Letzte Änderung: 20. Januar 2020