Large neighborhood search for the vehicle routing problem with two-dimensional loading constraints

In this paper we investigate the use of the large neighborhood search for solving the vehicle routing problem with two-dimensional loading constraints, an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem. Such a problem may be viewed as the combination of two complementary well-known problems: two-dimensional bin-packing and capacitated vehicle routing. The proposed method considers a two-phase solution procedure: a first phase generates a placement order and applies a bottom-left strategy to this order for packing the items in the vehicle and, a second phase is applied for reaching a feasible routing. Both phases are combined by using a diversification strategy. The proposed method has been evaluated on Gendreau´s benchmark instances. The obtained results are compared to those reached by the best methods taken from the literature. Encouraging results have been obtained.