A branch-and-price algorithm for a routing problem with inbound and outbound requests

In this paper the authors present a new problem arising in the context of non-emergency transportation of patients. The authors consider a hospital (the depot) and a set of patients with a medical appointment. Patients require either to go from home to hospital (inbound request) or from hospital to home (outbound request). The problem can be addressed as a Pickup and Delivery Problem, but the fact that all transportation requests are connected to the depot also allows tackling it as a special Multi-Trip Vehicle Routing Problem. The authors adopt the second standpoint and call it the Multi-Trip Vehicle Routing Problem with Mixed Pickup and Delivery, and Release and Due dates. The authors propose a specialized branch-and-price algorithm and demonstrate computationally that their approach outperforms a classical branch-and-price algorithm based on the Pickup and Delivery Problem modeling. The authors also show how the algorithm can be adapted to the solution of the Vehicle Routing Problem with Simultaneous Pickup and Delivery and Time Windows, and obtain new optimal solutions on benchmark instances.

Language

  • English

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Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01852646
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Jul 22 2022 2:18PM