@MASTERSTHESIS\{IMM2005-03870,
    author       = "A. M. Petursdottir and M. Gudmundsdottir",
    title        = "Solving a vehicle routing problem with cross docking",
    year         = "2005",
    keywords     = "pickup and delivery, cross docking station, routing, {VRP,} {SA}",
    school       = "Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, Technical University of Denmark, {DTU}",
    address      = "Richard Petersens Plads, Building 321, {DK-}2800 Kgs. Lyngby",
    type         = "",
    note         = "Supervised by assoc. prof. Jesper Larsen",
    url          = "http://www2.compute.dtu.dk/pubdb/pubs/3870-full.html",
    abstract     = "This thesis is about the solution of a pickup and delivery problem with a central cross docking station. All orders must first be picked up at their various locations and moved to the cross docking station. Then the orders can be delivered to their destinations.

The fleet of vehicles is considered to be homogeneous and each vehicle has a limited capacity. Each order has a specific size, along with exact pickup location and destinaiton.

An extensive mathematical model of the problem is presented and implemented in {GAMS}. The {LP} relaxation of the problem is then solved in order to get a lower bound. The problem is then solved by using Simulated Annealing (SA). Two versions of the {SA} algorithm are implemented and then improved, but they differ in the way they find a neighborhood solution. These two version are then compared. The quality of the solutions from the better algorithm is then considered by looking at the evolution of the objective values with time, when running the algorithms for a longer period of time. Furthermore, the importance of a good initial solution is investigated for both algorithms."
}