Abstract
The present study investigates the performance of heuristics while solving problems with routing and rostering characteristics. The target problems include scheduling and routing home care, security and maintenance personnel. In analysing the behaviour of the heuristics and determining the requirements for solving the aforementioned problems, the winning hyper-heuristic from the first International Cross-domain Heuristic Search Challenge (CHeSC 2011) is employed. The completely new application of a hyper-heuristic as an analysis tool offers promising perspectives for supporting dedicated heuristic development. The experimental results reveal that different low-level heuristics perform better on different problems and that their performance varies during a search process. The following characteristics affect the performance of the heuristics: the planning horizon, the number of activities and lastly the number of resources. The body of this paper details both these characteristics and also discusses the required features for embedding in an algorithm to solve problems particularly with a vehicle routing component.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Akjiratikarl C, Yenradee P and Drake P (2007). PSO-based algorithm for home care worker scheduling in the UK. Computers and Industrial Engineering 53 (4): 559–583.
Bai R and Kendall G (2005). An investigation of automated planograms using a simulated annealing based hyper-heuristics. In: Ibaraki T, Nonobe K and Yagiura M (eds). Meta-heuristics: Progress as Real Problem Solvers, Selected Papers from the 5th Metaheuristics International Conference (MIC'03). Springer: Kyoto, Japan, pp 87–108.
Begur S, Miller D and Weaver J (1997). An integrated spatial DSS for scheduling and routing home-health-care nurses. Interfaces 27 (4): 35–48.
Bertels S and Fahle T (2006). A hybrid setup for a hybrid scenario: Combining heuristics for the home health care problem. Computers & Operations Research 33 (10): 2866–2890.
Bräysy O and Gendreau M (2005). Vehicle routing problem with time windows, part I: Route construction and local search algorithms. Transportation Science 39 (1): 104–118.
Burke E, Kendall G and Soubeiga E (2003). A tabu-search hyper-heuristic for timetabling and rostering. Journal of Heuristics 9 (3): 451–470.
Burke E, De Causmaecker P, Vanden Berghe G and Van Landeghem H (2004). The state of the art of nurse rostering. Journal of Scheduling 7 (6): 441–499.
Burke E, Petrovic S and Qu R (2006). Case-based heuristic selection for timetabling problems. Journal of Scheduling 9 (2): 115–132.
Burke E, Kendall G, Mısır M and Özcan E (2012). Monte carlo hyperheuristics for examination timetabling. Annals of Operations Research 196 (1): 73–90.
Burke E et al (2013). Hyper-heuristics: A survey of the state of the art. Journal of the Operational Research Society 64 (12): 1695–1724.
Calvo RW and Cordone R (2003). A heuristic approach to the overnight security service problem. Computers & Operations Research 30 (9): 1269–1287.
Cordeau J-F, Desaulniers G, Desrosiers J, Solomon M and Soumis F (2002). VRP with time windows. In: Toth P and Vigo D (eds). The Vehicle Routing Problem. SIAM Publishing: Philadelphia, PA, pp 157–193.
Cowling P, Kendall G and Soubeiga E (2001). A hyperheuristic approach to scheduling a sales summit. In: Burke EK and Erben W (eds). Selected Papers from the 3rd International Conference on Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT'00), Vol. 2079 of LNCS Springer-Verlag: London, UK, pp 176–190.
Crama Y, Moonen L, Spieksma F and Talloen E (2007). The tool switching problem revisited. European Journal of Operational Research 182 (2): 952–957.
Easton K, Nemhauser G and Trick M (2001). The traveling tournament problem description and benchmarks. In: Walsh T (ed). Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP'01), Vol. 2239 of LNCS Springer: London, UK, pp 580–584.
Ernst A, Jiang H, Krishnamoorthy M and Sier D (2004). Staff scheduling and rostering: A review of applications, methods and models. European Journal of Operational Research 153 (1): 3–27.
Eveborn P, Flisberg P and Ronnqvist M (2006). Laps Care—an operational system for staff planning of home care. European Journal of Operational Research 171 (3): 962–976.
Günther M and Nissen V (2012). Application of particle swarm optimization to the british telecom workforce scheduling problem. In: Kjenstad D, Nordlander TE, Riise A, McCollum B and Burke E (eds). Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT'12), Son, Norway, pp 242–256.
Justesen T and Rasmussen M (2008). The home care crew scheduling problem. Master’s thesis, University of Denmark and University of Copenhagen.
Kovacs AA, Parragh SN, Doerner KF and Hartl RF (2012). Adaptive large neighborhood search for service technician routing and scheduling problems. Journal of Scheduling 15 (5): 579–600.
Krumke SO, Rambau J and Torres LM (2002). Online-dispatching of automobile service units. Technical Report 02-44, ZIB, Berlin.
Mısır M (2012). Intelligent hyper-heuristics: A tool for solving generic optimisation problems. PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, KU Leuven.
Mısır M, Verbeeck K, De Causmaecker P and Vanden Berghe G (2010). Hyper-heuristics with a dynamic heuristic set for the home care scheduling problem. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC'10). IEEE: Barcelona, Spain, pp 2875–2882.
Mısır M, Smet P, Verbeeck K and Vanden Berghe G (2011a). Security personnel routing and rostering: A hyper-heuristic approach. In: Gunalay Y and Kadipasaoglu S (eds). Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Applied Operational Research (ICAOR'11), Vol. 3 of LNMS, Istanbul, Turkey, pp 193–205.
Mısır M, Verbeeck K, De Causmaecker P and Vanden Berghe G (2011b). A new hyper-heuristic implementation in HyFlex: A study on generality. In: Fowler J, Kendall G and McCollum B (eds). Proceedings of the 5th Multidisciplinary International Scheduling Conference: Theory & Applications (MISTA’11). IEEE: Phoenix/Arizona, USA, pp 374–393.
Mısır M, Wauters T, Verbeeck K and Vanden Berghe G (2011c). A hyper-heuristic with learning automata for the traveling tournament problem. In: Voss S and Caserta M (eds). Metaheuristics: Intelligent Decision Making, the 8th Metaheuristics International Conference—Post Conference Volume. Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series. Springer.
Mısır M, Verbeeck K, De Causmaecker P and Vanden Berghe G (2012). An intelligent hyper-heuristic framework for CHeSC 2011. In: Hamadi Y and Schoenauer M (eds). Proceedings of the 6th Learning and Intelligent OptimizatioN Conference (LION’12), Vol. 7219 of LNCS Springer: New York.
Mısır M, Verbeeck K, De Causmaecker P and Vanden Berghe G (2013). A new hyper-heuristic as a general problem solver: An implementation in HyFlex. Journal of Scheduling 16 (3): 291–311.
Nareyek A (2003). Choosing search heuristics by non-stationary reinforcement learning. In: Resende MGC and Pinho de Sousa J (eds). Metaheuristics: Computer Decision-Making. Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, the Netherlands, pp 523–544.
Özcan E, Bykov Y, Birben M and Burke E (2009). Examination timetabling using late acceptance hyper-heuristics. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC'09). IEEE: Trondheim, Norway, pp 997–1004.
Özcan E, Mısır M, Ochoa G and Burke E (2010). A reinforcement learning—great-deluge hyper-heuristic for examination timetabling. International Journal of Applied Metaheuristic Computing 1 (1): 39–59.
Potvin J-Y and Rousseau J-M (1995). An exchange heuristic for routeing problems with time windows. Journal of the Operational Research Society 46 (12): 1433–1446.
Thathachar M and Sastry P (2004). Networks of Learning Automata: Techniques for Online Stochastic Optimization. Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, the Netherlands.
Trautsamwieser A and Hirsch P (2011). Optimization of daily scheduling for home health care services. Journal of Applied Operational Research 3 (3): 124–136.
Verstichel J and Vanden Berghe G (2009). A late acceptance algorithm for the lock scheduling problem. In: Voss S, Pahl J and Schwarze S (eds). Logistik Management. Springer: Heidelberg, pp 457–478.
Willemse EJ and Joubert JW (2012). Applying min-max k postmen problems to the routing of security guards. Journal of the Operational Research Society 63 (2): 245–260.
Acknowledgements
This research was carried out within the IWT 090549 project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mısır, M., Smet, P. & Vanden Berghe, G. An analysis of generalised heuristics for vehicle routing and personnel rostering problems. J Oper Res Soc 66, 858–870 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/jors.2014.11
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jors.2014.11