Chapter 6

TABU SEARCH HEURISTICS FOR THE

VEHICLE ROUTING PROBLEM

Jean-Frangois Cordeau and Gilbert Laporte

Canada Research Chair in Distribution Management & GERAD,HECMontreal,3OOOch. Cote-
Sainte-Catherine, Montreal, Canada H3 T2A 7, {cordeau;gilbert} @crt. umontreal. ca.

Abstract This article reviews some of the most important tabu search heuristics for the
vehicle routing problem. Some of the main tabu search features are first described:
neighbourhood structures, short term memory, long term memory, intensification.
The tabu search algorithms are then described, followed by computational results
and the conclusion.

Keywords: Vehicle Routing Problem, Tabu Search, Heuristics

1. Introduction
The classical Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is defined on an undirected
graph G = (V,E) where V = {vo,vi,... ,vn} is a vertex set and E =
{(vi,Vj) : V{,Vj E V, i < j} is an edge set. Vertex vo represents a depot
at which are based m identical vehicles of capacity Q, while the remaining
vertices are cities or customers. A non-negative cost, distance or travel time
matrix C = (cij) is defined on E. Each customer V{ has a non-negative demand
qi and a non-negative service time s^. The VRP consists of determining a set of
m vehicle routes i) of minimum total cost; ii) starting and ending at the depot;
and such that iii) each customer is visited exactly once by exactly one vehicle;
iv) the total demand of any route does not exceed Q; v) the total duration of
any route does not exceed a preset bound D. The number of vehicles is either
an input value or a decision variable. In the latter case vehicle fixed costs are
sometimes incorporated in the objective function. Most authors in the field
work with a fixed number of vehicles. It should be noted, however, that the best
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solutions reported (in terms of distance) do not always use the least possible
number of vehicles.
The VRP is an important combinatorial optimization problem. It also occu-
pies a central place in distribution management. Toth and Vigo (2002) report
that the use of computerized methods in distribution processes often results
in savings ranging from 5% to 20% in transportation costs. Golden, Assad
and Wasil (2002) and Barker (2002) describe several case studies where the
application of VRP algorithms has led to substantial cost savings.
The VRP was introduced by Dantzig and Ramser (1959) more than four
decades ago. Since then there has been a steady evolution in the design of
solution methodologies, both exact and approximate, for this problem. Yet, no
known exact algorithm is capable of consistently solving to optimality instances
involving more than 50 customers (Golden et al., 1998; Naddef and Rinaldi,
2002). Heuristics are usually used in practice.
Heuristics include constructive heuristics (e.g., Clarke and Wright, 1964)
which gradually build a feasible solution while attempting to keep solution cost
as low as possible, two-phase heuristics in which customers are first clustered
into feasible routes and actual routes are then constructed (e.g., Gillett and
Miller, 1974; Fisher and Jaikumar, 1981), and improvement methods which
either act on single routes by the application of a Traveling Salesman Problem
(TSP) heuristic, or on several routes by performing customer reallocations or ex-
changes. The best known intra-route moves are the classical r-opt interchanges
(Croes, 1958; Lin, 1965) and several variants such as Or-opt (Or, 1976), 2-opt*
(Potvin and Rousseau, 1995), and 4-opt* (Renaud, Boctor and Laporte, 1996).
Inter-route exchanges include those of Fahrion and Wrede (1990), Thompson
and Psaraftis (1992), Van Breedam (1994), and Kinderwater and Savelsbergh
(1997). As reported by Laporte and Semet (2002), classical heuristics such as
the savings method (Clarke and Wright, 1964) and the sweep algorithm (Gillett
and Miller, 1974) usually have a high execution speed but often produce solu-
tions having a large gap with respect to the best known solution value (typically
between 3% and 7%).
In the last fifteen years, several metaheuristics have been put forward for
the solution of the VRP. These typically perform a thorough exploration of
the solution space, allowing deteriorating and even infeasible intermediate so-
lutions. A number of methods maintain a pool of good solutions which are
recombined to produce even better ones. Gendreau, Laporte and Potvin (2002)
have identified six families of metaheuristics for the VRP: simulated anneal-
ing, deterministic annealing, tabu search, genetic algorithms, ant systems, and
neural networks. While the success of any particular method is related to its
implementation features, it is fair to say that tabu search (TS) has been highly
successful when applied to the VRP. For comparative computational results ob-
tained by means of classical and metaheuristics over the Christofides, Mingozzi