A TSP tabu search heuristic algorithm for the split delivery vehicle routing problem

The split delivery vehicle routing problem (SDVRP) is a relaxed problem of the classical capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP), which allows that each customer can be visited for multiple times while the CVRP allows only once. And it is also an NP-hard problem. In this paper, a tabu search heuristic algorithm with TSP cutting and splitting based on a bi-level program model of SDVRP is proposed. The bi-level programming model redefined the objective function of the SDVRP. The whole cost of the solution can be seemed as the cost of a big TSP path and the increased cost of cutting and splitting. So, the algorithm includes three phases. First, a big TSP path including the distribution depot and all the customers is constructed. Then, the big TSP is cut and split. And in the third phase, the algorithm solves the traveling salesman problem within each route to improve the solution. Finally, a computational study shows that the proposed method can really solve the SDVRP effectively on the benchmark instances in the SDVRP literature.