Modeling the Time Windows Vehicle Routing Problem in Cross-docking StrategyUsing Two Meta-heuristic Algorithms

In cross docking strategy, arrived products are immediately classified, sorted and organized withrespect to their destination. Among all the problems related to this strategy, the vehicle routingproblem (VRP) is very important and of special attention in modern technology. This paper addressesthe particular type of VRP, called VRPCDTW, considering a time limitation for each customer/retailer.This problem is known as NP-hard problem. Two meta-heuristic algorithms based on the Tabu search(TS) algorithm and variable neighborhood search (VNS) are proposed for its solution. Thesealgorithms are designed for real-world cases and can be generalized to the more complex models suchas those which deliveries can be specified in a split form. The proposed TS algorithm also offers acandidate list strategy which has no limitation for the number of nodes and vehicles. A computationalexperiment is performed to verify our presented algorithms. Through computational experiments, it isindicated that the proposed TS algorithm performs better than VNS algorithm in both aspects of thetotal cost and computation time