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 constraints to ensure a smooth production flow at the abattoir. In addition, several constraints to ensure animal welfare have to be met. These include duration limits for how long animals may stay on the vehicle as well as rules for mixing different animal categories. A tabu search based solution method for the problem is presented together with some preliminary test results.