A variable neighborhood search for Open Vehicle Routing Problem

In this study, the Open Vehicle Routing Problem, which the companies widely employ in practice using third-party logistics services, is discussed. This problem is in the class of high-dimensional and complex optimization problems. A three-phase Variable Neighborhood Search Algorithm was proposed to solve large-scale problems efficiently. In this proposed method, eight different neighborhoods are used, four within the route and four between the routes. In addition to this, wise shaking strategies are designed to escape local optimal solutions. The method's performance was tested on literature test instances and comparatively reported its competitiveness.