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Journal of applied research and technology

versión On-line ISSN 2448-6736versión impresa ISSN 1665-6423

J. appl. res. technol vol.9 no.1 Ciudad de México abr. 2011

 

A Hybrid Metaheuristic Approach to Optimize the Districting Design of a Parcel Company

 

R.G. González–Ramírez*1, N. R. Smith2, R. G. Askin3, Pablo A. Miranda4, J.M. Sánchez5

 

1,4 Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Escuela de Ingeniería Industrial, Av. Brasil 2251, Valparaíso, Chile. *E–mail: rosa.gonzalez@ucv.cl

2,5 ITESM, Campus Monterrey, Centro de Calidad y Manufactura. 2501 Eugenio Garza Sada South Av. Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. CP. 64849.

3Arizona State University. School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287–8809, USA

 

ABSTRACT

In this article we address a districting problem faced by a pickup and delivery parcel company over a determined service region. The service region is divided into districts, each served by a single vehicle that departs from a central depot. Two objectives are optimized: compactness and balance of the workload content among the districts. We present a mathematical formulation of the problem and a heuristic algorithm to solve the problem. Numerical results are presented in comparison to CPLEX 11.1 solutions for the smaller size instances. The results show that the heuristic performs well. The algorithm is able to solve moderate size instances in reasonable computational time, given the strategic nature of the problem.

Keywords: Districting, hybrid algorithm, metaheuristic, graph, Tabu search, GRASP.

 

RESUMEN

En este artículo abordamos un problema de sectorización para actividades logísticas que enfrenta una empresa de entrega y recolección de paquetería en una determinada región. La región a la que se da servicio es dividida en distritos, cada uno atendido por un solo vehículo que sale de un depósito central. Se busca optimizar dos objetivos: compacidad y balance de la carga de trabajo. Presentamos la formulación matemática del problema y un algoritmo heurístico para resolverlo. Se presentan resultados numéricos en comparación con las soluciones encontradas por CPLEX 11.1 para las instancias de menor tamaño. Los resultados muestran un buen desempeño del algoritmo heurístico, el cual es capaz de resolver instancias de tamaño moderado en tiempos razonables, dada la naturaleza estratégica del problema.

 

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