Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search Metaheuristic for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Parcel Lockers

Abstract

Background: The growth of e-commerce necessitates efficient logistics management to address rising last-mile delivery challenges. To overcome some of the last-mile delivery costs, parcel lockers as a delivery option, can be an alternative solution. This study presents the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Delivery Options (CVRPDO), which includes locker delivery. Methods: this problem is solved with An Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search (ALNS). The solution suggests some specific destroy and repair operators and integrates them with various selection schemes. The proposed method results are compared with the exact solution of the MIP model of the problem for validation. Results: Objective function values improved by 25%, 30%, 7%, 5%, and 6% for 1000, 800, 600, 400, and 200 customers, respectively, when using a 120-s ALNS runtime compared to the MIP model with a 3-h runtime. Conclusions: the CVRPDO problem involves creating a set of routes for ve-hicles that visit each customer at their delivery location or deliver their parcels to one of the lockers. These routes should respect the capacity of each vehicle and locker while minimizing the total routing costs and the number of utilized vehicles. The problem is resolved by ALNS algorithm, which outperformed the MIP model.