On a multi-trip vehicle routing problem with time windows integrating European and French driver regulations

摘要

In the European Union, truck drivers must comply with Regulation (EC) No 561/2006, which provides a set of rules on the daily or weekly working time and on break or rest periods after specific working times. Truck drivers can be back to the depot much earlier than the end of their working period, and be able to perform other trips. The resulting problem is a Multi-Trip Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows, where truck drivers have the possibility to accomplish, during their time horizon, more than one trip, combined with a Truck Driver Scheduling Problem. It aimed to find and assign a set of routes to a fleet of vehicles allowing each customer to be visited within its given time window, and the accumulated load to be delivered (or collected) not exceeding the capacity of the vehicle. Each truck driver must comply with applicable hours of service regulations, and the objective is to minimize total transportation cost. To solve this problem, we have developed a hybrid method composed of a genetic algorithm and a local neighborhood search. Experiments have been conducted on instances from the literature and real-life cases from SYSTRANS, a specialized French software company.