Many-to-many location-routing problem: a matheuristic approach

This project is a bilateral research collaboration between Professors Arne Lokketangen from the Department of Informatics of Molde University, Norway, and Ricardo Camargo from the Department of Industrial Engineering of the Federal University of Minas Ger ais, Brazil. It has the objective of developing mathematical models and solution algorithms for many-to-many location-routing problem, specially under a matheuristic perspective. Matheuristics are algorithms where an inter-operation of heuristics and mat hematical programming techniques is coordinated. The combination can be done by using mathematical programming methods to improve heuristics or, the other way around, utilizing heuristics to speedup exact methods. Matheuristic algorithms exploit the featu res of the underlined mathematical model of the problem in order to short the resolution time. Although matheuristics are a recent topic, they are attracting an increasing number of researches due their effectiveness and efficiency. More specifically, th e objective is to combine the best features of heuristic algorithms, i.e. to find a good solution in a short time, and exact methods or mathematical programming techniques, i.e. to assess the quality of the attained solution, under a matheuristic approach . This bilateral project is an opportunity for contributing to the design of the many-to-many distribution systems as well as to the matheuristic research field. Professor Arne Lokketangen is a renowned specialist in vehicle routing problems solved by h euristic algorithms, while Ricardo Camargo has addressed hub location problems by Benders decomposition, a classical mathematical programming method.