A simulated annealing algorithm for vehicle scheduling problem

Abstract

As the construction activity has been growing, the companies that supply fresh concrete expand their production scale to meet their customers’ needs. The more customers, the longer queue tank trucks have to wait to pick up the fresh concrete. The customers are construction companies that have different construction works at the same time while the transportation time is only at night. They have to schedule efficiently the fleet of fresh concrete tank trucks during the night (turning the tank trucks a few turns) with constraints on the time window for the transfer of fresh concrete from the concrete company to the construction site as well as constraints on the waiting time for loading fresh concrete in the company. The scheduling for the fleet of construction company’s tank trucks will be modeled to minimize total transportation costs (fixed, variable) with estimated waiting times and tank truck’s turns several times during the night. The model of logistics problem is NP hard; Therefore, two algorithms are proposed to find the nearly optimal solution: heuristics and simulated annealing algorithm. The results will be compared and analyzed.