A hybrid simulated annealing algorithm for location and routing scheduling problems with cross-docking in the supply chain

The location and routing scheduling problems with cross-docking can be regarded as new research directions for distribution networks in the supply chain. The aims of these problems are to concurrently design a cross-docking center location and a vehicle routing scheduling model, known as NP-hard problems. This paper presents a two-stage mixed-integer programming (MIP) model for the location of cross-docking centers and vehicle routing scheduling problems with cross-docking due to potential applications in the distribution networks. Then, a new algorithm based on a two-stage hybrid simulated annealing (HSA) with a tabu list taken from tabu search (TS) is proposed to solve the presented model. This proposed HSA not only prevents revisiting the solution but also maintains the stochastic nature. Finally, small and large-scale test problems are randomly generated and solved by the HSA algorithm. The computational results for different problems show that the proposed HSA performs well and converges fast to reasonable solutions. (C) 2012 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.