Generalized disaggregation algorithm for the vehicle routing problem with time windows and multiple routes

Abstract

In this paper, we address the VRP with multiple routes and time windows. For this variant of the VRP, there is a time interval within which every customer must be visited. In addition, every vehicle is allowed to perform more than one route within the same planning period. Here, we propose a general disaggregation algorithm that improves the exact approach described in (Macedo et al., 2011). We describe a novel rounding rule and a new node disaggregation scheme based on different discretization units. We describe a new integer programming model for the problem, which can be used, with a slight modification, to exactly assess whether a given solution is feasible or not. Finally, we report some computational experiments performed on a set of instances from the literature.