A parallel branch-and-bound heuristic for the integrated long-haul and local vehicle routing problem on an adaptive transportation network

Consolidation of commodities and coordination of vehicle routes are fundamental features of supply chain management problems. While locations for consolidation and coordination are typically known a priori, in adaptive transportation networks this is not the case. The identification of such consolidation locations forms part of the decision making process. Supply chain management problems integrating the designation of consolidation locations with the coordination of long haul and local vehicle routing is not only challenging to solve, but also very difficult to formulate mathematically. In this paper, the first mathematical model integrating location clustering with long haul and local vehicle routing is proposed. This mathematical formulation is used to develop algorithms to find high quality solutions. A novel parallel framework is developed that combines exact and heuristic methods to improve the search for high quality solutions and provide valid bounds. The results demonstrate that using exact methods to guide heuristic search is an effective approach to find high quality solutions for difficult supply chain management problems.