Block-matrix-based approach for the hybrid vehicle routing problem with fuzzy travel time and transportation type selection

This study proposes a novel model for the
vehicle routing problem that considers transportation type selection between
milk-run and cross-dock strategies under uncertain environment with fuzzy
travel time to derive an optimal transportation plan. Furthermore, a novel
block-matrix-based approach for the transportation type selection to explore
optimal transportation plans in an intuitive, reasonable, effective, and
efficient form is presented. An extended biogeography-based optimization (BBO)
algorithm is proposed to effectively derive a transportation plan with the
optimal degree of plant satisfaction by
extending the operators of migration and mutation, and introducing a novel
self-adaptive mutation rate, as well as a secondary mutation operator.