This paper deals with two different route design problems in a continuous space with neighbours and barriers: the shortest path and the travelling salesman problems with neighbours and barriers. Each one of these two elements, neighbours and barriers, makes the problems harder than their...

Harmony search algorithm (HS) cannot always avoid being trapped in local optima, and several local search algorithms have recently been used to overcome this limitation by searching the neighborhood of some solution for improved ones. However, how local search affects the performance of HS has...

This paper presents two heuristic algorithms for the distance-based critical node problem (DCNP) that finds k nodes whose removalminimizes the pairwise connection within D hops in the remaining network. The structural properties of complex networks havenot yet been extensively addressed in the...

In this paper, we study the capacitated multi-trip vehicle routing problem with time windows (CMTVRPTW) and its use in different scenarios, which have a common feature: vehicles can make multiple trips. This feature is widely used in the real world; not only can it reduce the number of vehicles...

The capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) is of great importance to intelligent transportation systems. Recently, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approaches have shown great potential in solving the CVRP. Specifically, encoder-decoder frameworks are trained by reinforcement learning with...

Packing problems are a type of fundamental global optimization problem with many real-world applications. In this paper, we propose a new variant of three-dimensional (3D) packing problem, called the Single Cylindrical Packing Problem with Cylindrical Items (SCPP-CI), which involves packing as...

Background: Order picking is a critical activity in end-product warehouses, particularly using the picker-to-part system, entail substantial manual labor, representing approximately 60% of warehouse work. Methods: This study develops a new linear model to perform batching, which allows for...

We consider a periodic review inventory control problem of perishable goods with a fixed lifetime. Instead of considering either FIFO or LIFO issuance policy, we incorporate customers’ behavior in the retail setting using a mixture of FIFO and LIFO issuance policy. First, we characterize...

Intuitive decision making is a topic that has generated contrasting views due to the perceived trade-off between casting speedily AND accurate judgments. While cognitive psychologists have provided evidence suggesting that human intuition might lead to erroneous decisions, fast and frugal...