A multi-level composite heuristic for the multi-depot vehicle fleet mix problem

The problem of simultaneously allocating customers to depots, finding the delivery routes and determining the vehicle fleet composition is addressed. A multi-level composite heuristic is proposed and two reduction tests are designed to enhance its efficiency. The proposed heuristic is tested on benchmark problems involving up to 360 customers, 2 to 9 depots and 5 different vehicle capacities. When tested on the special case, the multi-depot vehicle routing, our heuristic yields solutions almost as good as those found by the best known heuristics but using only 5 to 10% of their computing time. Encouraging results were also obtained for the case where the vehicles have different capacities. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.