A tabu search approach for the livestock collection problem

We present a problem dealing with transportation of live animals to slaughterhouses. The problem is taken from the Norwegian meat industry, and may be viewed as a vehicle routing problem extended with inventory constraints to ensure a smooth production flow at the slaughterhouse. In addition, several constraints to ensure animal welfare have to be met. These include duration limits for how long animals can stay on the vehicle as well as rules for mixing different animal categories. In this paper, we show that this real-world problem can be solved heuristically, even if it is large both in size and complexity. A tabu search based solution method for the problem is presented, and results from computational testing are given, including comparisons with manual solutions from today's planning system. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.