Master Cloud Computing & HPC

Research Project
Mathematical modelling & graph theory
Subject :

Using distributed and high performance

computing to solve vehicle
routing problem with stochastic demands

Realized by :

Yassine AMMAR, Hamid ELBOUABIDI,

Youssef CHARKAOUI and Sara MAFTAH

Academic Year : 2019-2020

PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY. 2

Using distributed and high performance

computing to solve vehicle routing problem with
stochastic demands
Yassine AMMAR*, Youssef CHARKAOUI*, Hamid ELBOUABIDI* and
Sara MAFTAH*

Abstract—After introducing the general classes of Vehicle Routing Problem and some related solutions, this report
focuses on the Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands (VRPSD) within the safety stocks approach that
deals with uncertainty in the customer demands by considering safety stocks, i.e. when designing the routes, part of the
vehicle capacity is reserved to deal with potential emergency situations caused by unexpected demands. We will
discuss the methodology used by Juan and al. and we will see how the parallelization of this methodology can be
employed to efficiently solve the VRPSD.
Thus, for a given VRPSD instance, our algorithm considers different levels of safety stocks. For each of these levels, a
different scenario is defined.

Index Terms—Vehicle Routing Problems, Stochastic demands, Stochastic optimisation, Stochastic Planning, Safety
Stocks, Parallel Metaheuristic, Parallel and distributed computing.

1 G ENERAL P RESENTATION OF V EHI - 1.1 Components

CLE R OUTING P ROBLEMS
S INCE the introduction of a paper by Dantzig
and Ramser in 1959 [], the Vehicle Routing
Problems (VRP’s) became an important class
of integer optimisation problems that was
considered a generalization of Travelling
Salesman Problems (TSP’s) and attracted a
large part the operational research community.
The authors of [] studied the problem in its
simplest form as a real-world application
concerning the delivery of gasoline to gas
stations, and proposed a simple matching-
based heuristic for its solution and illustrated
it on a small-sized example.
We begin by given general components of
VRP’s.
• *ENSIAS Msc Cloud computing & High performance computing
students .
Four main components constitute a vehicle
routing problem. The generality, the terminolo-
gies mainly used for these components are:
• The network, which is generally de-
scribed as graph.
• The sites to be visited (customers to
serve, tasks to process, etc.), denoted as
customers which have a specific request
often called a demand. Demands can be
of many types from a product to be
supplied/collected to a service to be pro-
vided
• The fleet of vehicles that represents the
mobiles performing the task.
• The depot(s), usually from where the ve-
hicles start and come back.
The network is made up of vertices and arc-
s/edges representing the links between ver-
tices. In a logistics context, it is characterized
by the transport infrastructure. It consists of the
fixed installations including the road junctions,
and nodes which are terminals (such as sea-
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY.
ports, stations, warehouses and depots).
Nevertheless, in other applications, the net-
work is not always materialized by a physical
structure, and arcs are used to describe the
allowed movements.
Note that the graph can be direct, particu-
larly when they can be traversed in only one
direction because of the presence of one-way
courses.
Each arc is weighted by a cost, which generally
represents its length and/or travel time.
1.2 Objective
The main objective of VRP is the customers’
demands satisfaction with the minimization of
total costs.
1.3 Variants of VRP’s
The variations of components with the appear-
ance of constraints give the emergence to many
types of VRP’s.
∗ Capacitated VRP (CVRP) : is a Vehicle
RoutingProblem (VRP) in which a fixed
fleet of delivery vehicles ofuniform ca-
pacity must provide service to known
customerdemands for a single commod-
ity from a common depot atminimum
transit cost. That is, CVRP is like VRP
with theadditional constraint that every
vehicle must have uniformcapacity of a
single commodity.
∗ VRP with Time Windows (VRPTW) :
is a VRP with the additional restriction
that each customer ci should be served
in a time interval [ei , li ] (time window),
where ei and li represents the early and
late time.
∗ VRP with Backhauls (VRPB) : The
VRPB is the extension ofthe VRP in
which the customer set is partitioned
into two subsets. One contains cus-
tomers that require a given quantity of
product to be delivered and the second
contains customers where a given quan-
tity of inbound products must be picked
up.
∗ Distance-Constrained VRP (DCVRP) :
In DCVRP, each route has a maximum
3
length (or time) constraint instead of ca-
pacity constraint.
∗ Multi-Depot VRP (MDVRP) : company
may have several depots from which it
can serve its customers. If the customers
are clustered around depots, then the
distribution problem should be modeled
as a set of independent VRPs. However,
if the customers and the depots are in-
termingled, then a MDVRP should be
solved. A MDVRP requires the assign-
ment of customers to depots. A fleet of
vehicles is based at each depot.
∗ VRP with Pick-Up and Delivering
(VRPPD) : is a VRP in which the pos-
sibility that customers return some com-
modities is contemplated. So in VRPPD,
it should be taken into account that
the goods returned by customers to the
delivery vehicle must fit into it. These
restrictions make the planning problem
more difficult and can lead to bad uti-
lization of the vehicles capacities, in-
creased travel distances or a need for
more vehicles. Hence, it is usual to con-
sider restricted situations where all de-
livery demands start from the depot and
all pick-up demands shall be brought
back to the depot, so there are no in-
terchanges of goods between the cus-
tomers.
∗ Split Delivery VRP (SDVRP) : a relax-
ation of the VRP wherein it is allowed
that the same customer can be served
by different vehicles if it reduces overall
costs. This relaxation is very important
if the sizes of the customer orders are as
big as the capacity of a vehicle.
∗ Periodic VRP (PVRP) : In classical
VRPs, typically the planning period is a
single day. In the case of the Period Vehi-
cle Routing Problem (PVRP), the classi-
cal VRP is generalized by extending the
planning period to a specified number of
days.
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY. 4

where a set K of a homogeneous fleet of

vehicles of capacity Q can start, and vertices
v = 1, 2, 3, ..., n represent the customers, each
with a given demand qi for a service. A weight
cij is associated with each edge (i, j), i, j ∈ V .
The CVRP can be mathematically formulated
as the following :

X X
min cij · xkij (1)
k∈K (i,j)∈V
X X
xkij = 1 ∀i ∈ V \ {0} (2)
j∈V\{i} k∈K
Fig. 1. Types of VRP’s X X
xkij = xkji ∀i ∈ V \ {0}∀k ∈ K (3)
j∈V\{i} j∈V\{i}
X X
qi · xkij ≤ Q ∀k ∈ K (4)
i∈V\{0} j∈V\{i}

xkij ∈ {0, 1} ∀(i, j) ∈ V∀k ∈ K (5)

(1) is the objective-function, sums the total cost

of the routes.
Constraints (2) and (3) are the continuity con-
straints: a single vehicle visits customer i and
this vehicle leaves it.
Vehicle capacities hold due to constraints (4).
For (5), the binary variables xkij are equal to
1 if vehicle k goes through arc (i, j), and 0
otherwise.

Fig. 2. A pictorial representation of the problem 2 S OLUTION METHODS FOR THE

1.4 The mathematical formulation of CVRP
In this section, we review the formulation
of a classical VRP variant, namely the
capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP).
This formulation is the basis of the other
VRP variants. The purpose is to set the
notations, nomenclature and foundations for
the remaining sections of this paper.
The capacitated vehicle routing problem
(CVRP) can be defined on a complete and
undirected weighted graph G = (V, E),
where V = {0, 1, 2, ..., n} is the vertex set
and E = {(v, u) : v, u ∈ V, v 6= u} is the edge
set. Vertices v = 0 represent the depot from
CVRP
2.1 Classical methods
Exact algorithms to solve VRP especially the
CVRP include tree search methods like the
branch-and-bound, the branch-and-cut and the
branch-and-price algorithms.
A branch-cut-and-price exact algorithm was
suggested by S. Ropke and al. in [] for the Ca-
pacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Two-
Dimensional Loading Constraints.
Column generation or Dantzig-Wolfe decompo-
sition provides a flexible framework that can
accommodate complex constraints and time-
dependent costs.
Also dynamic programming and the integer
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY.
programming-based methods are methods to
solve VRP.
Nevertheless, besides to their computational
cost, all these methods seems to be obslete in
the case of big instances, thus researchers tried
to find alternatives to this methods.
2.2 Heuristics and meta-heuristics meth-
ods
2.2.1 Simple heuristics
Simple heuristics are designed to build a sin-
gle solution, while local search procedures and
metaheuristics examine several solutions, ei-
ther by generating a sequence of solutions or
working on a population. Apart from the con-
struction of initial solutions in metaheuristics,
they are also widely used in commercial VRP
software to quickly find feasible solutions of
good quality. Two reasons for their popularity
are their simplicity and the fact that they can
be easily extended to cope with various con-
straints.
Thera are many meta-heuristic class solutions
to the VRP, a good review can be found in
[], we give a short description for some of
metaheuristical methods :
• The simulated annealing (SA) algorithm for
combinatorial optimization was intro-
duced by Kirkpatrick et al. in 1983 and
is inspired by a physics phenomenon
concerning the behavior of atoms under
temperature changes.
• The Tabu Search (TS) comes from Glover,
and can be applied to various com-
binatorial problems. Unlike SA, TS is
a fully deterministic method. In sev-
eral cases, TS provides very good so-
lutions, making this method among
the most effective to tackle difficult
combinatorial problems. These successes
have made the method very popular,
although nowadays, other approaches
seem to be more efficient, such as evo-
lutionary methods and iterated local
search algorithms.
• The variable neighborhood search (VNS)
and its simpler variant the variable
neighborhood descent (VND) are fast
5
and compact metaheuristics. They are
often designed to replace the local search
within another metaheuristic. The ap-
proach was introduced by Mladenovi
and Hansen.
2.2.2 Bio-inspired methods
Bio-inspired methods are class of stochastic
search methods that operate on a population
of solutions by simulating. We could find many
subclasses of Bio-inspired algorithms, such as
: genetic algorithms, Ant colony optimisation
algorithms, neural network algorithms, a full
and detailled description of these algorithms
are given in F.B.Pereira and J.Tavares.
2.3 SR-GCWS heuristic
Simulation in Routing via the Generalized
Clarke and Wright Savings heuristic (SR-
GCWS) is a method based on the Clarke and
Wright savings algorithm which is one of the
most known heuristic for VRP. It was devel-
oped by Clarke and Wright in 1964 and it
applies to problems for which the number of
vehicles is not fixed (it is a decision variable),
and it works equally well for both directed
and undirected problems. When two routes
(0, , i, 0) and (0, j, , 0) can feasibly be merged
into a single route (0, , i, j, , 0), a distance saving
Sij = ci0 + c0j − cij is generated.
The algorithm works at follows :
• Step 1 : Savings computation
– Compute the savings
sij = ci0 + c0j − cij for i, j = 1, , n
and i 6= j .
– Create n vehicle routes (0, i, 0) for
i = 1, , n.
– Order the savings in a non in-
creasing fashion.
• Step 2 : Create the ”savings list” Process
the savings list beginning with the top
most entry in the list (the largest Sij ). For
the savings under consideration (Sij ),
include link (i, j) in a route if no route
constraints will be violated through the
inclusion of (i, j). The following three
cases need to be considered.
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY.
– case 1 : If neither i nor j have
already been assigned to a route,
then a new route is initiated in-
cluding both i and j .
– case 2 : If exactly one of the two
points (i or j ) has already been
included in an existing route and
that point is not interior to that
route (a point is interior to a route
if it is not adjacent to the depot in
the order of traversal of points),
then the link (i, j) is added to that
same route. If the point is inte-
rior and not violating the capacity
then add (i, j) to the same route.
If its violating the capacity make
a new route with the point (cus-
tomer) i.
– case 3 : If both i and j have al-
ready been included in two dif-
ferent existing routes and neither
point is interior to its route, then
the two routes are merged by con-
necting i and j . If they are interior
then the merge cannot be done.
• Step 3 : If the savings list Sij has not been
exhausted, return to Step 2, processing
the next entry in the list; otherwise, stop.
2.4 Tabu search
Tabu Search was proposed by Glover (1986)
and has quickly become one of the best and
most widespread local search methods for com-
binatorial optimization. The method performs
an exploration of the solution space by moving
from a solution xt identified at iteration t to the
best solution xt+1 in a subset of the neighbour-
hood N (xt ) of xt . Since xt+1 does not necessarily
improve upon xt a tabu mechanism is put in
place to prevent the process from cycling over
a sequence of solutions.
A naive way to prevent cycles is to forbid
the process from going back to previously en-
countered solutions, but doing so would typ-
ically require excessive bookkeeping. Instead,
some attributes of past solutions are registered
and any solution possessing these attributes
may not be considered for θ iterations. This
6
mechanism is often referred to as short term
memory. Other features such as diversification
and intensification are often implemented. The
purpose of diversification is to ensure that the
search process will not be restricted to a lim-
ited portion of the solution space. A possible
way to implement diversification is to keep
track of past solutions and penalize frequently
performed moves. This mechanism was first
applied to the VRP by Taillard (1992), and is
often called long term memory. Intensification
consists of performing an accentuated search
around the best known solutions.
3 V EHICLE R OUTING P ROBLEMS WITH
S TOCHASTIC D EMANDS
3.1 Uncertainty and VRP
In reality VRP are not always determinsitic,
many components or constraints could be
stochastic, thus we talk about Stochastic Vehicle
Routing Problems (SVRP) .
The main classes of SVRP are :
• VRP with stochastic demands (VRPSD) : A
probability distribution is specified for
the demand of each customer, in most
cases demands are typically assumed to
be independent.
• VRP with stochastic travel times (VRPSTT)
: The travel times required to move be-
tween vertices, as well as sometimes ser-
vice times, are random variables.
• VRP with stochastic customers (VRPSC) :
Each customer has a given probability of
requiring a visit.
Fig. 3. Types of SVRP
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY.
In this paper we will give a detailled de-
scription of the Vehicle Routing Problems with
Stochastic Demands.
3.2 VRPSD basic charcteristics and exam-
ples
VRPSD have received attention only recently,
the first detailed study of VRPSD was given in
a paper by D.J.Bertsimas proposed in 1992, in
wich the author try to configure the problem
of money collection/distribution over a central
Bank, in this case the demands was stochastic,
following some specific probability law of
distribution. Hence if a bank has to collect
money on a daily basis from several but not all
of its branches. The capacity Q of the vehicle
used may not correspond to any physical
constraints but to an upper bound on the
amount of money that a vehicle is permitted
to carry for safety reasons established by
insurance companies. In the same way, there
is a similar study where the bank decides to
deliver money to Automated Teller Machines
(ATM) that are geographically dispersed over
several areas.
Similarly, the collection of recyclable material
can be considered as a VRSPD, where the
probability of visiting an assembly point is
given, and the capacity Q corresponds to the
physical constraint that a truck can carry only
a fixed weight or volume, we talk about Green
VRPSD (GVRPSD).
Moreover, the VRPSD is related to many
practical situations. Psaraftis (1995) and
Chepuri and Homem de Mello (2005)
investigated the delivery of petroleum
products, industrial gases, and home heating
oil. Shen et al. (2009) presented an example
regarding the delivering of supplies to cities
under a state of emergency. Markovic et al.
(2005) suggested that the VRPSD could be used
to model the delivery and pickup processes
of mail, packages, and recycled material from
offices and industrial plants.
The basic characteristic of the VRPSD is that
the actual demand of each customer is revealed
only when the vehicle reaches the customer.
7
As such, on one hand, the vehicle routes are
designed in advance by applying a particular
algorithm but on the other hand, due to the
uncertainty of the customers demands, at some
point along a route the capacity of the vehicle
may be depleted before all demands on the
route have been satisfied.
The main goal here consists of determin-
ing the optimal solution (set of routes) that
minimizes those tangible costs subject to the
following constraints:
1) All routes begin and end at the depot.
2) Each vehicle has a maximum load ca-
pacity, which is considered to be the
same for all vehicles.
3) All (stochastic) customer demands
must be satisfied.
4) Each customer is supplied by a single
vehicle.
5) A vehicle cannot stop twice at the
same customer without incurring in a
penalty cost.
3.3 Dealing with demands uncertainty
Two major techniques are used to deal with
stochasticity in VRP’s : a priori optimization and
re-optimization .
3.3.1 A priori optimization
In priori-optimization a solution must be deter-
mined beforehand, this solution is ”confronted”
with the realization of the stochastic parameters
in a second step.
We can distinguish tree main approaches :
• Chance-constrained programming :
Probabilistic constraints are sometimes
transformed into deterministic ones by
the formulation of an optimization
problem that ensures that the
probability of meeting a demand is
above a certain level (for example :
P (Di ≤ capacity) ≤ 1 − α where Di total
demand assigned to a route. In other
words, it restricts the feasible region so
that the confidence level of the solution
is high. The chance-constrained method
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY. 8

is a relatively robust approach, however, programming with recourse. In the first stage,
it is often difficult to solve. an a priori solution (i.e. a complete set of routes
• Stochastic programming with recourse as in a deterministic VRP) is planned. Then,
In this approach we must take a recourse in the second stage, this first-stage solution is
which is an action must be done to ”ad- executed; that is, each route is followed, and
just” the a priori solution to accommo- the actual values of the stochastic parameters
date the revealed information. (the customer demands in the case of VRPSD)
are gradually revealed.
3.3.2 Re-optimization In the second stage of the problem, failures may
Re-opitmization technique is based on the be observed when a route is executed. Such
implicit assumption that information (in failures occur when the vehicle performing
VRPSD’s information means demands) is the route arrives at a customers location
revealed over time as the vehicles perform without sufficient residual capacity to service
their assigned routes, routes are created piece the observed demand. These occurrences are
by piece based on the currently available simply referred to as route failures.
information. To recover route feasibility, recourse actions
For example Victor Pillac and al. proposed must be taken. As presented in Gendreau,
an appraoch based on dynamic programming Jabali, and Walter (2014), various studies have
known as Multiple Scenario Approach (MSA) as been conducted to formulate and assess the
if a pool of scenarios is continuously optimized efficiency of the possible recourse actions that
and updated to capture the uncertainties. can be applied to the VRPSD.
Even if internally each scenario in the pool
contains acomplete routing for the customers, In the jargon of transport sciences, the first
the only information visible to the user is the stage is named tactical plannig, and the second
next customerto visit. This study proposes an is operational planning.
adaptation of this framework to the VRPSD,
by maintaining a pool of scenarios containing 3.4.2 recourse policy
possible realizations of the customer demands. Recourse actions that can be implemented
Scenarios are optimized with and Adaptive independently by the vehicles performing the
Variable Neighborhood Search and the next routes determined in the first stage of the
client to visit is selected with a Consensus problem. These recourse actions can either
algorithm. be reactive (i.e., implemented only after a
This technique offer greater flexibility over route failure occurs) or proactive (i.e., made
the recourse optimization action, however, it in anticipation of possible failures that could
have to be run every time a decision has to be take place along the route). A reactive recourse
taken, which can be time consuming for large action takes the form of a back-and-forth (BF),
instances. trip to the depot, where the vehicle is able to
restock and then serve the remaining demand
In the following we’ll try to give a two ex- at the customer location where the failure
amples of both frames of work re-optimization occurred.
and a-priori optimization, in the aim to see how After a BF trip, the vehicle simply proceeds
that affect the formulation of the problem. to the next scheduled customer on the route.
In the case of an exact stockout, whereby the
revealed demand matches exactly the residual
3.4 A priori optimization example : re-
capacity of the vehicle, a restocking trip is
course action
performed, entailing that the vehicle visits the
3.4.1 Recourse action depot before proceeding to the next customer
In this approach, the problem is decomposed along the route, see Gendreau, Laporte, and
into two stages, as in two-stage stochastic Sguin (1995) and Hjorring and Holt (1999). In
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY. 9

an effort to simplify the presentation of the of the VRPSD is given by :

concepts proposed in this paper, we will refer X
to BF trips as all reactive recourse actions taken M inimize cij xij + Q(x)
after route failures, be it as the consequence i<j
of insufficient residual capacity or an exact n
X
stockout. subject to x1j = 2m
j=2
n
X
To formulate the VRPSD, a policy that gov- xkj = 2 (k = 2, ..., n)
erns how the recourse actions are applied must j=2
be determined. Although a wide variety of P
vi S µi
X 
recourse policies can be envisioned (see Gen- xij ≤ |S| − ,
D
dreau, Jabali, and Walter 2016), research has v ,v
i j S

been performed primarily on two categories of (S ⊂ V \ {v1 } , 2 ≤ |S| ≤ n − 2)

recourse actions. In the case in which only reac- 0 ≤ xij ≤ 1 (0 ≤ i < j < n)
tive recourse actions are considered, the classic
0 ≤ x0j ≤ 2 (j = 2, ..., n)
recourse policy is used to model the VRPSD.
Following this policy each route is executed x = (xij ) integer
until it either fails or faces an exact stockout,
at which point an appropriate reactive recourse
3.5 Re-opimization example : the use of
action is implemented.
safety stocks
Safety stocks approach belongs to the so called
stochastic planning strategies, the main idea be-
hind it is the prevention of route failures.
3.4.3 Formulation and mathematical model The highlight of this methodology is that it can
transform the issue of solving a given VRPSD
instance into an issue of solving a small set of
VRPSD in the priori combinatorial
Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP)
optimization approach is splitted into two
instances. Thus, our approach takes advan-
stages :
tage of the fact that extremely efficient meta-
heuristics for the CVRP already exists, which
First stage : find m routes that visit all clients cannot be done in the reourse action priori-
once. optimization approach.
Second stage : execute the routes apply com- In the next section, we will focus on the safety
plete recourse actions stock as an approach to solve the VRPSD.
Settings : demands follow known
distributions and are revealed when a vehicle 4 VRPSD AND THE S AFETY S TOCKS
arrives at a clients location. FRAME WORK
4.1 Liminary and basic notations
Objective: Min. { routing cost + average re-
course cost } In this section we will be based on the work of
Constraints: The total expected demand of A. Juan and al. and campare it to the method-
each route should not exceed the capacity of ology of parallelization.
a vehicle, each client is served by a single Consider a complete network constituted by
vehicle and each route starts and ends at the n + 1 nodes, V = {0, 1, 2, 3, · · · , n} where 0
depot. symbolizes the central depot and V ∗ = V \ {0}
the n customers. The costs associated with trav-
In this case, the mathematical formulation eling from node i to node j are denoted by
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY. 10

c(i, j); ∀i, j ∈ V and the following assumptions use of Genetic Algorithms, Tabu Search,
hold true: Simulated Annealing or Ant Colony Op-
timization.
1) c(i, j) = c(j, i) (i.e., costs are symmetric)
2) c(i, i) = 0
Thus, one key idea behind our approach is to
3) The triangle inequality is satisfied :
transform the issue of solving a given VRPSD
c(i, j) ≤ c(i, k) + c(k, j)
instance into a new issue which consists of
These costs are usually expressed in terms of solving several ”conservative” CVRP instances,
traveled distances, traveling plus service time each characterized by a specific probability of
or a combination of both. suffering route failures.
Let Vehicle Maximum Capacity : The term conservative refers here to the fact
V M C > M ax{Di }, where Di ≥ 0 ∀i ∈ V ∗ rep- that only a certain percentage of the vehi-
resent the independent random variables that cle total capacity will be considered as avail-
describe customer demand. able during the routing design phase. In other
For each customer, the exact value of its de- words, part of the total vehicle capacity will be
mand is not known before- hand but it is only reserved for attending possible ”emergencies”
revealed once the vehicle visits. No further as- caused by under-estimated random demands
sumptions are made on these random variables during the actual distribution (routing execu-
other than that they follow a well-known theo- tion) phase. This part can be considered as a
retical or empirical distribution either discrete safety stock since it reflects the level of extra
or continuous with existing mean denoted by stock that is maintained to buffer against pos-
E[Di ]. sible route failures. In fact, in the point of view
In this context, the aim is to find a feasible solu- of Juan and al. the safety stcoks methodology is
tion (set of routes) that minimizes the expected described by the following specific steps :
delivery costs while satisfying all customer de-
mands and vehicle capacity constraints. 1) Consider a VRPSD instance defined by
a set of n customers with stochastic
4.2 Fundamentals of the safety stocks demands : Di ≥ 0 and (1 ≤ Di ≤ n)
methodology where each Di follow a predefined
statistical distribution either theoretical
A safety stock is a certain amount of the vehicle
or empirical as long as its mean exists.
capacity that is not considered while designing
Let the vehicle maximum capacity be
the routes. Then, if the final routes demands
VMC.
surpass their expected values, this stock can
be employed to try to satisfy them. Thus, the
2) Determine a set K of percentages,
aim of considering safety stocks is to reduce the
where each element k is the percentage
probability of a route failure. The safety stocks
of the vehicle capacity W that can be
approach is inspired by the two following ma-
used during the route design phase,
jor facts:
in other words, 1k represents a fixed
• The VRPSD can be seen as a generaliza- level of safety stock. For each of these
tion of the CVRP or, to be more specific, elements, follow the steps 3 to 9.
the CVRP is just a VRPSD with constant
demands -random demands with zero 3) Consider the capacitated CVRP(k ) with
variance-. a total vehicle capacity of W ∗ = kW
• While the VRPSD is yet an emerging with the deterministic demands
research area, extremely efficient meta- d∗i = E[Di ]. Where E[Di ] symbolizes
heuristics do already exists for solving the mean or expected value of each
the CVRP, specially a powerful state- random demand.
of-the-art metaheuristics based on the
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY.
4) Generate an initial solution for the
CVRP(k ). This solution is also an apri-
oristic solution for the CVRP-SD. It will
be employed as it is as long as there
is no need of corrective actions (routes
failures and re-stockings). Therefore,
the cost associated to this solution,
CCV RP (k) , can be considered as a base
or fixed cost of the CVRP-SD solution.
In the case of the stochastic problem,
there is also a variable cost CCA (k)
that depends on the corrective actions
undertaken. Consequently, for a given
value of k , the total cost of the ”stochas-
tic” solution (the one associated with
the CVRP-SD) is the sum of the fixed
cost corresponding to the ”determinis-
tic” solution (the one associated with
the CVRP) and the variable cost due to
corrective actions, therefore :
CCV RP SD (k) = CCV RP (k) + CCA (k)
5) Use Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) to es-
timate the expected cost due to correc-
tive actions for each route j of the apri-
j
oristic solution, E[CCA (k)] (1 ≤ j ≤ m),
Then aggregate the expected total cost
for all routes,
m
X j
E[CCA (k)] = E[CCA (k)]
j=1
In this phase, a short simulation is used
to quickly get that estimate. Then, the
expected total cost of the solution is
calculated as follows: mary of this methodology :
E[CCV RP SD (k)] = CCV RP (k) + E[CCA (k)]
6) Set a base solution as the initial solu-
tion.
7) Employ a metaheuristic algorithm,
which starts an improvement process
that will continue until a stopping con-
dition, based on time or a fixed num-
ber of iterations, is reached. At each
iteration the following steps are imple-
mented. First, a perturbation is applied
to the base solution to generate a new
one. If the fixed cost of the new solution
11
is lower than the fixed cost of the cur-
rent base solution, then the list of the
best deterministic solutions is updated
(only if it is not full or if the worst
solution has a higher cost, then a swap
is performed) and the expected total
cost of the new solution is estimated
with a short simulation. If this cost is
lower than the expected total cost of the
base solution, the latter is replaced and
the list of the best stochastic solutions
is updated. Otherwise, an acceptance
criterion is used to decide whether the
base solution is deteriorated to the new
one. Before that, if the fixed cost of
the new solution is higher, then that
solution is discarded. This iterative pro-
cess will provide, after analyzing many
possible solutions, a list of promising
solutions for the CVRP-SD.
8) Try to improve all promising solutions
with an intensive routing algorithm.
9) Use a long simulation to generate a
sample of total costs for each promising
solution. Large samples are required to
obtain estimates with small confidence
intervals.
10) Finally, return the top best stochas-
tic solutions (considering all solutions
found with the different values in K ),
and the corresponding samples (they
will be used for completing a risk anal-
ysis).
The following flowchart represent a sum-
 1-2 Stochastic and capacitated MDVRP intance Di random
variable with mean E[Di] K set of values of vehicle safety stock

nlter←1
Consider the cap,MDVRP instance with di=E[Di] and W*=(1-
K)W,where K is the element of K in the niter position
3
Compute a biased-randomized
priority list of customers for each
depot based on marginal savings

4 initSol←generate initial sol for cap.MDVRP

Assign each customer to a
ddepot
nlter←nlter+1
Use a short simulation to estimate E[TC(initSol(K))]
Design routes with the fast CWS
5 basSol←initSol heuristic
6
Create two fixed-size lists,bestDetSol and
bestStochSol,and include baseSol in both Re-allocate a given percentage
of customers to depots
newSol←perturbate(basSol)

Re-design routes with the fast

N
CWS heuristic
Is new sol beter
Y than basSol for
7
the cap.MDVRP
Update bestDetSol

Is newSol better N
than baseSol for Y
the stochastic
and cap .MDVRP N

Does newSol satisfy

baseSol←newSol
acceptance criterion

Update bestSochSol Y
N baseSol←newSol
Is stopping criteria
Y met ?
8
Improve all routing
sols(bestDetSol and bestStochSol)

Obtain sample observations of TC

for bestDetSol and bestStochSol 9

Is nlter<size(K) ? Y

10
Retuen bestDetSol and bestStochSol with
sample observations for risk analysis N
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY.
4.3 Advantages of safety stocks approach
• The methodology is valid for any statis-
tical distribution with a known mean,
either theoretical e.g., Normal, Log-
Normal, Weibull, Gamma, etc. or even
experimental.
• In some sense, the methodology is ”re-
ducing” a complex VRPSD -where no
efficient metaheuristics have been de-
veloped yet- to a limited set of more
tractable CVRPs where excellent, fast
and extensively tested metaheuristics ex-
ists. This adds credibility to the quality
of the final solution or solutions pro-
vided to the decision-maker.
• Thus, the methodology exposed here can
be applied to CVRPSD instances of vir-
tually any size (e.g., problems with hun-
dreds or even thousands of nodes) since
complexity due to size can be managed
by efficient CVRP metaheuristics and
Monte Carlo simulation.
4.4 Further considerations
The algorithm used to get the initial solution for
the CVRP is the one proposed in Juan et al. Ini-
tially, a customer-depot assignment map is set,
and then the CWS heuristic is applied to obtain
a fast routing plan. Regarding safety stocks, it
is expected that lower values of k will provide
more reliable routes, as a high percentage of
the vehicle capacity will be reserved as safety
stock. However, a high fixed cost will result too,
since more vehicles will be needed to cover all
the customers demands. On the other hand, a
high value of k is related to a lower fixed cost
but a higher variable cost due to the elevated
risk of having to return to the depot to reload.
Considering the trade-off between these two
costs, different values are tested as indicated
in step 2. The cost due to corrective actions is
computed as follows. In case of route failure,
it includes the cost of returning to the depot
first and then to the customer being served.
It is assumed that the vehicle delivers all the
remaining stock before going back to reload. A
re-stocking is carried out when the expected
demand of the next customer is higher than
13
the current remaining stock. The cost of this
strategy incorporates the costs on the edges that
link a customer with the depot and the depot
with the next customer minus the cost of the
edge linking both customers.
4.5 Computational experiments
The algorithm has been implemented as a
Python application and tested on 23 MDVRP
benchmark instances: the first seven were pro-
posed by Christofides and Eilon (1969), the fol-
lowing four were created by Gillett and Johnson
(1976) and the remaining are described in Chao
et al. (1993). Vidal et al. (2012), Escobar et al.
(2014), and Juan et al. (2015) are some recent
works using them. These instances have been
adapted as described next. The demand of each
customer (di ) has been considered as a random
variable Di following a log-normal distribution
with mean d i and variance vdi . Three different
scenarios have been considered, each one with
a respectively different variance : 0.1 · E[Di ],
0.5 · E[Di ] and 1 · E[Di ].
The first column identifies the instance and the
second shows the best known solution (BKS) for
the MDVRP. The next five columns are associ-
ated with the solution with the lowest fixed cost:
the first, the best deterministic solution - fixed
cost (BDS-FC), represents the fixed cost; the
second calculates the gap between the BKS and
the BDS-FC, which reveals the performance of
the algorithm for the deterministic version of
the problem; the third, the best deterministic
solution - total expected cost (BDS-TEC), is the
expected total cost; the fourth, the best deter-
ministic solution - reliability (BDS-R), has been
computed as one minus the number of route
failures divided by the number of routes; and
the fifth, best deterministic solution - k (BDS-
K), provides the percentage of the vehicle total
capacity chosen. The following column repre-
sents the gap between the BDS-TEC and the
BDS-FC. The next three columns are associated
with the solution with the lowest expected total
cost: the best stochastic solution - total expected
cost (BSS-TEC) contains the expected total cost;
the following two columns, the best stochas-
tic solution - reliability (BSS-R) and the best
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY. 14

stochastic solution - k (BSS-K), show the asso-

ciated reliability, and the k-value respectively.
The next two columns are the gaps between
the BSS-TEC and the BKS, and between the
BSS-TEC and the BDS-FC, respectively. It is
important to highlight that, provided a large
number of sim- ulation iterations is used, the
BSS-TEC is bounded by the BDS-FC and the
BKS (lower bounds), and the BDS-TEC (upper
bound). Therefore, the previous gaps show the
difference between the BSS-TEC and its lower
bounds. The last column is the gap between the
expected total costs of both solutions. Results
are presented in the following tables.
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY.
5 PARALLELIZATION OF SAFETY
STOCK APPROACH
5.1 A multiple scenario solution approach
As introduced in the previous section, the
safety stock approach deals with uncertainty
in the customer demands by considering a
safety stock in the vehicle load, i.e. a certain
percentage of the vehicle maximum capacity is
not accounted for when designing the routes.
Instead, this percentage is reserved to deal
with potential emergency situations caused by
unexpected demands.
Using safety stocks not only contributes to
reduce variable costs due to route failures but,
related to that, it also increases the reliability
or robustness of the planned routes, i.e. as
safety stock levels increase, the probability of
suffering a route failure diminishes. Notice,
however, that employing safety stocks also
increases fixed costs associated with aprioristic
routing design, since more vehicles and more
routes are needed when larger buffers are
considered.
Notice, however, that employing safety stocks
also increases fixed costs associated with
aprioristic routing design, since more vehicles
and more routes are needed when larger buffers
are considered. Therefore, when minimizing
the total expected cost a tradeoff exists between
its two components, fixed costs and expected
variable costs. Thus, the challenge relies in the
selection of the appropriate buffer size.
Given a VRPSD instance, our approach con-
siders different levels of this buffer size and 5.2
then solves the resulting scenarios in parallel
by assigning each to a different processing unit.
This is performed by employing a modified
version of the algorithm proposed by Juan et
al. (introduced in the previous section).
In this modified version a Monte Carlo simu-
lation stage is integrated inside the multi-start
process, which allows estimating the variable
costs associated with each candidate solution.
Thus, among the multiple solutions generated
for each scenario, the ones with lowest total
expected costs are stored as the best-found re-
sult associated with the corresponding safety-
16
stocks level. Once the concurrent execution of
the different scenarios ends, the corresponding
solutions are compared to each other and the
one with the lowest total expected costs is se-
lected as the best-found routing plan.
Here, Monte Carlo simulation stage has been
integrated into the multi-start constructive pro-
cess defined in the original algorithm in order
to obtain, for each generated solution, estimates
of its expected variable costs.
During its multi-start construction stage, the
SR-GCWS-CS algorithm introduces a biased
random behavior within the Clarke & Wright
Savings (CWS) heuristic in order to generate al-
ternative starting solutions satisfying the prob-
lem constraints. Each of these feasible solutions
consist of a set of roundtrip routes from the
depot that, altogether, satisfy all demands of
the nodes by visiting and serving all of them
exactly once. While the classical CWS heuris-
tic always chooses the edge with the largest
savings value at each step, the SR-GCWS-CS
uses a pseudo-geometric distribution to assign
a selection probability to each edge in the sav-
ings list. Therefore, for each potential edge its
probability of being selected is coherent with its
savings value, i.e. edges with greater savings
will be more likely to be selected from the
list than those with smaller savings. By iter-
ating this solution-construction process, differ-
ent randomized CWS solutions, some of them
outperforming the original CWS solution, can
be obtained in just a few milliseconds for most
small- and mid-size instances.
The parallelization of the algorithm
 Given a CVRPSD instance withh Di ~
know probability distrubution and
VMC >> Max{Di}

Set scenario #0 Set scenario #1

stock1 = step%
Set scenario #2
stock2 = (2*step)%
…… Set scenario #p
stock = (p*step)%
stock = 0%

Consider the fololowing problem :

CVRP(stock) with di = E[Di] and Avaliable vehicule Capacity = (1 –
stock)*VMC

Assign each problem-scenario to a different processing unit

Solve it by using a variation of the SR-GCWS-CS algorithm tat integrates MC

simulation

Obtain Obtain Obtain Obtain

solution solution solution …… solution
#0 #1 #2 #p

Choose the best-found solution

according to total expected costs
and reliability criteria
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY. 18

5.3 A multi-computer and multi-process ex- • A viable alternative to parallelizing algo-

periment rithms has been the exploitation of on-
going increases of clock speed of single
In order to analyze how expected total costs
CPUs of modern microprocessors.
provided by the algorithm depend upon the
variables computing time and parallelization Using Parallel and Distributed Computing
level, a final experiment was designed using a Systems help to meet requirements of
heterogeneous cluster environment composed algorithm efficiency and solution quality.
of 16 multi-core node. The experiment con- Moreover, they allow working with a broad
sisted in choosing some of the largest VRPSD range of problem instances in terms of size and
instances, and using the same benchmarks as complexity. Several physical computation units
in the execution of the sequential version of thework concurrently to solve a problem. with the
safety stocks methology. common objective of solving a set of problem
The experience will be executed as a multi- instances.
thread application in Python. These physical computation units can be
a sequential CPU, a multi-core CPU, or
a network of computation nodes. Those
6 C ONCLUSION computing systems can be based on several
decompositions of work units such as
The trend in the VRP concern the use of GPU functional or data parallelism. The basic
(Graphics Processing Unit) in discrete optimiza- idea is to divide conceptual tasks and/or input
tion and in routing problems. The focus is on data into several work packages, which are
GPU-based methods which make use of par- simultaneously processed by different physical
allel processors assigned to different pieces of or logical computational units.
distributed data. The use of these systems is For the CVRP, a large set of efficient
central to the solution of large applications in optimization methods, heuristics, and meta-
which huge data sets must be processed, often heuristics have been already developed,
in real-time. However, this is not yet the case for the
Therefore, this simple report has a principle VRPSD, which is a more complex problem due
aim of introducing a perspective on the use of to the uncertainty introduced by the random
parallel computing to solve VRPSD, so that the behavior of customer demands. Therefore,
programming of VRPSD becomes feasible on there is a real necessity for developing more
GPU. efficient and flexible approaches for the
VRPSD. On one hand, these approaches should
be efficient in the sense that they should
A PPENDIX A provide optimal or near-optimal solutions
T RENDS IN PARALLEL AND DISTRIBUTED to small and medium VRPSD instances in
COMPUTING reasonable computing time. On the other
hand, they should be flexible in the sense
A.1 The overview that no further assumptions need to be made
Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems concerning the random variables used to model
has received attention in the operations customer demands, e.g. these variables should
research (OR) field already for decades, not be assumed to be discrete neither to follow
However, unsurprisingly, the application of any particular distribution.
parallel optimization has been hesitant because:

• Parallelizing algorithms is challenging in A.2 The trends

general from both the algorithmic and Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems
the computational perspective. make possible to distribute the computational
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY.
effort of intensive problem-solving processes
through the use of multi-processors and/or
multi-computers. Thus, these approaches allow
the use of various programming paradigms for
implementing algorithms. On one hand, in a
multi-processor schema some physical process-
ing unit share a machine, which can be a mono-
core CPU, a multi-core CPU or a combination
of both.
The basic paradigm involved in the use of
this schema is shared-memory programming:
the tasks, processes or threads share the com-
mon global memory system and their in-
ter task/process/thread communications are
memory based.
In this context, a task is a logical concept that
represents a set of program instructions to be
executed by one algorithm or application.
A process refers to a running instance of a com-
puter program, i.e., a process might implement
one or multiple tasks.
Finally, a process might contain multiple con-
current execution threads, each of them imple-
menting one or several tasks.
On the other hand, in a multi-computer
schema, several physical machines are linked
via network connections such as high-speed
dedicated networks or Ethernet LANs. These
multi-computer connections can be coupled ge-
ographically (e.g. a cluster-computing environ-
ment located in a computer room, a super-
computing environment with a dedicated net-
work, etc.), or more loosely-coupled in dis-
tributed environments like it happens in Cloud
and Grid Computing. These distributed do-
mains are usually known as meta-computing
environments in the sense that a computing in-
frastructure is deployed beforehand and it does
not necessarily constitute a basic property of
the end-user computer, i.e. this infrastructure is
only used as a computing service. The connec-
tions can also be similar to the Internet: a large-
scale network following different schemes of
contributory or volunteer computing.
These contributory systems allow the coordi-
nated use of thousands of isolated machines
in a wide geographically distributed manner.
In a multi-computers schema, the basic parallel
paradigm is message passing, where tasks/pro-
19
cesses in different machines communicate by
interchanging data packets in the form of send-
ing and receiving messages. Currently, some
of these models are mixed in hybrid com-
puting environments, like it happens in some
supercomputers, with hundreds or thousands
of multi-computers connected to a dedicated
local high-speed network, or clusters in a LAN
composed of multiprocessor machines.
A.3 The use of Parallel and Distributed
Computing Systems to solve VRPs
Normally, parallel and distributed methods in
VRP are used based on:
• How the global search is conducted, i.e.
either by a unique process or by a coor-
dinated set of processes.
• The type of communication and syn-
chronization patterns during the global
search, which might require different
amounts of data exchange.
• Whether or not the synchronization
steps are rigid.
Typically, another point of interest is the set
of initial parameters of the search, which can
be used to find one particular solution from
a set of solutions with different constraints or
different objective functions, thus generating
multiple analysis scenarios. Furthermore,
algorithm parallelization can be done in
different ways depending on the problem and
the hardware/software computing platform
being employed.
Several parallel and distributed computing
approaches have been already applied
to different VRP variants. Generally
speaking, one common resource is to use a
parallel/distributed ”master-slave” approach,
where the master (coordinator) processor can
take a sequential-based search and dispatch
intensive computations to a set of slave
computation processors or workers.
Alternatively, the master processor
can also take a combination of initial
parameters/constraints or a set of alternative
scenarios, and distribute those scenarios
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY. 20

it ignores lower-level architectural constraints

and some other important details, such as
memory access contention and overheads,
synchronization overheads,interconnection
network throughput, connectivity, speed limits
and link bandwidths, etc.

Those parameters, in fact, limit the

performance obtained by parallel or distributed
implementations and are not appropriately
considered in most parallel approaches to
VRPs. In our situation we are dealing with
uncertainty in the customer demands by
considering a safety stock in the vehicle
load, i.e. a certain percentage of the vehicle
maximum capacity is not accounted for when
designing the routes. Instead, this percentage
is reserved to deal with potential emergency
Fig. 4. Master-Slave approach
situations caused by unexpected demands.
Using safety stocks not only contributes to
reduce variable costs due to route failures but,
among the slave processors for a concurrent related to that, it also increases the reliability
execution. Information sharing at global level or robustness of the planned routes, i.e. as
can be then used as a way to improve the local safety stock levels increase, the probability of
searches/scenarios. suffering a route failure diminishes. However,
Some of the simplest applications of parallel employing safety stocks also increases fixed
and distributed models do not involve shared costs associated with aprioristic routing design,
information but rather attempt to use as much since more vehicles and more routes are needed
parallel computation as possible. when larger buffers are considered. Therefore,
when minimizing the total expected cost, a
All these parallelization techniques are trade off exists between its two components,
based on: fixed costs and expected variable costs. Thus,
the challenge relies in the selection of the
• The idea of subdividing the direct
appropriate buffer size.
acyclic graph associated with the VRP
instance into several subgraphs, which
are then assigned to the available pro-
cessors in each interaction. A PPENDIX B
• The use of composition operations to P YTHON PARALLEL P ROGRAMMING
allow sharing global information in each B.1 Python in a parallel world
step.
To be an interpreted language, Python is fast,
They use Parallel-shared RAM (PRAM) and if speed is critical, it easily interfaces with
memory models of computation to evaluate extensions written in faster languages, such as
algorithms of high complexity. C or C++. A common way of using Python is
to use it for the high-level logic of a program;
Intuitively, this conceptual model the Python interpreter is written in C and is
corresponds to the programmers view of known as CPython. The interpreter translates
a particular kind of parallel computers (one the Python code in an intermediate language
with a shared-memory multiprocessor), but called Python bytecode, which is analogous to
PROJECT OF MATHEMATICAL MODELLING & GRAPH THEORY.
an assembly language, but contains a high level
of instruction. While a Python program runs,
the so-called evaluation loop translates Python
bytecode into machine-specific operations. The
use of interpreter has advantages in code pro-
gramming and debugging, but the speed of a
program could be a problem. A first solution is
provided by third-party packages, where a pro-
grammer writes a C module and then imports
it from Python. Another solution is the use of
a Just-in-Time Python compiler, which is an
alternative to CPython, for example, the PyPy
implementation optimizes code generation and
the speed of a Python program.
B.2 Working with processes in Python
On common operating systems, each program
runs in its own process. Usually, we start a
program by double-clicking on the icon’s pro-
gram or selecting it from a menu. In this recipe,
we simply demonstrate how to start a single
new program from inside a Python program. A
process has its own space address, data stack,
and other auxiliary data to keep track of the
execution; the OS manages the execution of all
processes, managing the access to the computa-
tional resources of the system via a scheduling
procedure.
B.3 Working with threads in Python
Thread-based parallelism is the standard way
of writing parallel programs. However, the
Python interpreter is not fully thread-safe. In
order to support multithreaded Python pro-
grams, a global lock called the Global Inter-
preter Lock (GIL) is used. This means that only
one thread can execute the Python code at the
same time; Python automatically switches to
the next thread after a short period of time or
when a thread does something that may take a
while. The GIL is not enough to avoid problems
in your own programs. Although, if multiple
threads attempt to access the same data object,
it may end up in an inconsistent state.
21
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