Use of Metaheuristics for solving pricing problems arising from vehicle routing problems

The vehicle routing problem is a frequent real-world challenge, especially in transportation and logistics. It involves finding efficient routes for a fleet of vehicles to serve a group of customers while minimizing the overall travel cost. Methods for solving this problem exactly, meaning the solution found is guaranteed to be the best possible, are known to suffer from severe scalability issues even for moderate problems involving a few hundred customer locations, let alone real-sized problems which at times may contain several thousand customer locations. There is a known bottleneck in the exact methods for solving this problem, which involves a solution of a subproblem, that our project aims to address by using heuristic methods. If successful, this approach could significantly increase the size of the problems that can be solved exactly, which could lead to companies and other entities being able to reduce their costs associated with transportation. This project will enhance the research of the participating institutions in combinatorial optimization, a vital real-world field, and further solidify Montreal’s (Concordia’s hometown) position as a hub for this type of research. Additionally, it will promote collaboration between the host and home institutions, paving the way for future projects and research initiatives.

Faculty Supervisor:

Claudio Contardo

Student:

Partner:

Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Education

University:

Concordia University

Program: