Capacitated Bounded Cardinality Hub Routing Problem: Model and Solution Algorithm

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new mathematical model and an efficient solution algorithm for the Capacitated Bounded Cardinality Hub Routing Problem, optimizing hub placement and routing with capacity and flow constraints.

Contribution

It proposes a novel branch-and-cut algorithm with Benders decomposition and heuristic enhancements for solving complex hub routing problems.

Findings

The method effectively solves large instances within reasonable time.

Embedding heuristics accelerates convergence and improves solution quality.

Exploiting symmetry enhances computational performance.

Abstract

In this paper, we address the Bounded Cardinality Hub Location Routing with Route Capacity wherein each hub acts as a transshipment node for one directed route. The number of hubs lies between a minimum and a maximum and the hub-level network is a complete subgraph. The transshipment operations take place at the hub nodes and flow transfer time from a hub-level transporter to a spoke-level vehicle influences spoke- to-hub allocations. We propose a mathematical model and a branch-and-cut algorithm based on Benders decomposition to solve the problem. To accelerate convergence, our solution framework embeds an efficient heuristic producing high-quality solutions in short computation times. In addition, we show how symmetry can be exploited to accelerate and improve the performance of our method.