Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 571414, 16 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/571414
Research Article

A Solution Approach from an Analytic Model to Heuristic Algorithm for Special Case of Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands

Selçuk K. İşleyen1 and Ö. Faruk Baykoç2

1Department of Industrial Engineering, Ataturk University, 25240 Erzurum, Turkey
2Department of Industrial Engineering, Gazi University, Maltepe, 06570 Ankara, Turkey

Received 18 August 2008; Accepted 11 December 2008

Academic Editor: Irina Trendafilova

Copyright © 2008 Selçuk K. İşleyen and Ö. Faruk Baykoç. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

We define a special case for the vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands (SC-VRPSD) where customer demands are normally distributed. We propose a new linear model for computing the expected length of a tour in SC-VRPSD. The proposed model is based on the integration of the “Traveling Salesman Problem” (TSP) and the Assignment Problem. For large-scale problems, we also use an Iterated Local Search (ILS) algorithm in order to reach an effective solution.