A Fetch Algorithm For Multi-depot Vehicle Routing Problem

With the development of science and technology, the economic modernization is accelerating. All of the countries face both opportunity and challenge. Modern logistics, an advanced technology for companies, which plays a significant role in the development of economy and society, is regarded as an important way of lowering cost and enhancing productivity. At present, the industry of logistics is developing towards globalization, informatization and integration, and logistics distribution plays a more important role in supply chain.The Vehicle Routing Problem(VRP)is a key part of logistics distribution, and optimizing the vehicle routing can bring more profits to the enterprise. Vehicle Routing Problem was an important problem in recent years in the fields of Operational Research, Application Mathematics, Network Analysis, Graph Theory, Computer Applications, Traffic Transportation etc. It was derived from the field of Traffic Transportation and had widely applied to communication, production, national defense, biology etc.VRP is a typical NP-hard problem and is difficult to be solved by using pure mathematical methods. With the development of intelligent technology, more and more people use intelligent methods to solve the vehicle scheduling problem. These methods include genetic algorithm, simulated annealing algorithm, tabu search algorithm and Hopfield network. There methods can solve the Vehicle Routing Problem better. However, with the development of modern business, the trend of corporation become big and global and the acquirement of scale logistics, which impel the necessity of building more than one distribution centers. So Multiple-Depot Vehicle Routing Problem(MDVRP) become a new important branch of vehicle routing problem.Multi-Depot Vehicle Routing Problem(MDVRP)is as well as one of the complicated combi-natorial optimization problems and can be found in reality, and closely associated with people's daily life. Multi-depot VRP means there are more than one depot from which vehicles can go out to distribution.The main work of this paper is researching the Multi-depot Vehicle Routing Problem. In the first part, telling some ground and the motility of the research, as well as the literature review. Then part two introduces some theories concerned to the Multi-depot Vehicle Routing Problem as well as some algorithms that can be used to solve the MDVRP. In order to solve Multi-Depot Vehicle Routing Problem better and break the rule that an order can only serviced by a car, a new method called A Fetch Algorithm is put forward in the third part of the paper, the basic principle is summarized as well. Meanwhile, the paper has quantized the effective carriage, which to be the conditions of the Fetch Algorithm, and described the rules of the fetch. The illustration result shows that model and algorithm are effective for Multi-Depot Vehicle Routing Problem. The paper considers the Multi-depot Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows as well. The last part of the paper is the conclusion.