A heuristic branch-cut-and-price algorithm for the ROADEF/EURO challenge on Inventory Routing
Abstract
In this paper, we propose a heuristic solution method for the Inventory Routing Problem introduced during the 2016 ROADEF/EURO challenge, that we coin as REC-IRP. Inventory routing has attracted researchers for many years due to both its practical and theoretical interests (Coelho et al.; 2013). The REC-IRP proposed for the challenge is original and complex for several reasons : the logistic ratio optimization objective, the hourly time-granularity for inventory constraints, the driver/trailer allocation management. Clearly, designing an exact solution approach is out of reach for large size instances as those proposed during the challenge.
However, we decided to address the REC-IRP with a branch-cut-and-price framework : a cut-and-column generation procedure is developed, along with a heuristic pricing algorithm to generate new columns and a heuristic fixing procedure to generate integer solutions
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