A Heuristic Branch-Cut-and-Price Algorithm for the ROADEF/EURO Challenge on Inventory Routing

Abstract

This paper is part of the special section devoted to the ROADEF/EURO challenge on inventory routing. We propose an extended formulation that we address with a heuristic branch-cut-and-price method. Among the difficulties that we had to face are a fractional objective function, the simultaneous generation of constraints and columns, and a complex pricing problem. We evaluate our approach on the benchmark instances proposed for the challenge.