Development of Model and Algorithm for Depot Balancing Multi-Depot Vehicle Scheduling Problem Considering Depot Balancing

The main of multi-depot vehicle scheduling problem (MDVSP) is to schedule the timetabled trips using limited resources, optimally. The problem is very important in the management of the transportation systems. One of the most useful ways to better manage these systems is to consider the real conditions including depot balancing constraints. To normalize the number of vehicles departed from each depot and the number of drivers assigned to each depot, new constraints are proposed in this paper. This normalization prevents excessive accumulation of vehicles in one or more depots and it balances labor between depots. We suggest a new mathematical formulation for MDVSP in which the balancing constraints are considered as soft constraints. To solve the problem with the new constraints an auction-based heuristic algorithm with decompositions ideas is proposed. The CPLEX software is used to evaluate the proposed model and the presented method in order to compare the results. The computational results show that the proposed algorithm solves the problem in appropriate time.