Tabu Search for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Trips, Time Windows, and Simultaneous Delivery-Pickup

This paper discusses a vehicle routing problem with multiple trips, time windows, and simultaneous delivery-pickup (VRPMTTWSDP). This problem is a variant of the basic vehicle routing problem (VRP) including the following characteristics: multiple trips, time windows, and simultaneous delivery-pickup. In this paper, a solution approach based on tabu search (TS) is proposed. In the proposed TS, the sequential insertion (SI) algorithm is used to construct an initial solution. A neighbor structure is generated by applying an operator order consisting of eleven operators of relocation, exchange, and crossover operators. A tabu solution code (TSC) method is applied as a tabu restriction mechanism. Computational experiments are carried out to examine the performance of the proposed TS using hypothetical instances. The performance of the proposed TS is compared to the local search (LS) and the genetic algorithm (GA). The comparison shows that the proposed TS is better in terms of the objective function value