The Double Traveling Salesman Problem with Multiple Stacks and a Choice of Container Types

Abstract

The double traveling salesman problem with multiple stacks involves the transportation of goods between two regions. In one region, a vehicle carrying a container visits customers, where pallets of goods are loaded into the container. The container is then shipped to a different region, where another vehicle visits another set of customers where the pallets are unloaded. Pallets are loaded in several rows inside the container, where each row follows the last-in-first-out principle. The standard test instances for the double traveling salesman problem with multiple stacks implies the use of a 45-foot pallet wide container to carry EUR-1 pallets. This paper investigates the effect on transportation costs if an open side container could be used when transporting the pallets. Computational experiments show savings in transportation costs of up to 20%. Moreover, by using a container loaded from the side, rather than from the rear, the defining attributes of the double traveling salesman problem seem to be lost.

A metaheuristic for the double traveling salesman problem with partial last‐in‐first‐out loading constraints

“…Furthermore, they devised a B&C algorithm that was able to find optimal solutions for instances with up to 18 customers. Hvattum et al (2020) analyze the effect on transportation costs in the DTSPMS, when considering the use of a container loaded from the side, instead of a container loaded from the rear. The experiment is performed with a variant of the VNS, variable neighborhood descent, and shows savings in transportation costs of up to 20%.…”

A Method for Transportation Planning and Profit Sharing in Collaborative Multi-Carrier Vehicle Routing

“…Both of these two problems are derived from the classical vehicle routing problem (VRP). The VRP was derived from the traveling salesman problem [2] and was first proposed by Dantzig and Ramser in 1959 [3], which involved the design of a set of minimum-cost vehicle routes, originating and terminating at a central depot, for a fleet of vehicles that services a set of customers with known demands [4]. Since 1959, the VRP has been studied extensively, and many different approaches have been proposed and developed.…”