European Journal of Operational Research最新文献

{"title":"Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedures with Path Relinking. An analytical review of designs and implementations","authors":"Manuel Laguna, Rafael Martí, Anna Martínez-Gavara, Sergio Pérez-Peló, Mauricio G.C. Resende","doi":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.022","url":null,"abstract":"This is a comprehensive review of the Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP) metaheuristic and its hybridization with Path Relinking (PR). GRASP with PR has become a widely adopted approach for solving hard optimization problems since its proposal in 1999. The paper covers the historical development of GRASP with PR and its theoretical foundations, as well as recent advances in its implementation and application. The review includes a careful analysis of PR variants, paying special attention to memory-based and randomized designs, with a total of ten different implementations. It identifies the design questions that are still open in the scientific literature. The experimental section applies advanced PR implementations on two well-known combinatorial optimization problems, linear ordering and max-cut, in an effort to answer these open questions. The paper also explores the hybridization of PR and other metaheuristics, such as tabu search, scatter search, and random-keys genetic algorithms. Overall, this review provides valuable insights for researchers and practitioners seeking to implement GRASP with PR for solving optimization problems.","PeriodicalId":55161,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Operational Research","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143583111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A prescriptive tree-based model for energy-efficient room scheduling: Considering uncertainty in energy generation and consumption","authors":"Siping Chen, Raymond Chiong, Debiao Li","doi":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.023","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the energy-efficient room scheduling (ERS) problem by considering uncertainties in energy consumption and renewable energy generation in buildings. Rather than the conventional ‘predict, then optimise’ approach, we propose an improved prescriptive tree-based (IPTB) model that directly ‘prescribes’ scheduling solutions. Our model utilises contextual information on energy consumption (e.g., temperature and humidity) and renewable energies (e.g., wind speeds and sunlight) to generate direct ERS solutions. It is trained using a novel optimisation loss function that aligns historical ERS solutions with current conditions, ensuring robustness and tractability by exploiting problem-specific properties. To evaluate the proposed model’s performance, experiments on randomly generated ERS instances demonstrate that the IPTB model is trained efficiently across various problem sizes and consistently outperforms advanced data-driven optimisation methods in prescriptive accuracy. Moreover, the IPTB model achieves more balanced energy consumption, particularly under practical scenarios emphasising on energy demand charges. A case study using real-world datasets from six buildings at Monash University, Australia, validates the model’s effectiveness in addressing complex practical constraints inherent in ERS problems.","PeriodicalId":55161,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Operational Research","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143877981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Randomized strategyproof mechanisms with best of both worlds fairness and efficiency","authors":"Ankang Sun ,&nbsp;Bo Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.027","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.027","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study the problem of mechanism design for allocating a set of indivisible items among agents with private preferences on items. We aim to design a mechanism that is strategyproof (in which agents find it optimal to report their true preferences) and ensures a certain level of fairness and efficiency. We first establish that no deterministic mechanism can simultaneously be strategyproof, fair, and efficient for the allocation of indivisible chores. We then introduce randomness to address this impossibility. For allocating indivisible chores, we propose randomized mechanisms that are strategyproof in expectation as well as ex-ante and ex-post (best of both worlds) fair and efficient. For allocating mixed items—where an item may be a good (positive utility) for one agent and a chore (negative utility) for another, we propose randomized mechanisms that are strategyproof in expectation while ensuring fairness and efficiency for two-agent scenarios.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55161,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Operational Research","volume":"324 3","pages":"Pages 941-952"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143583104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Solving soft and hard-clustered vehicle routing problems: A bi-population collaborative memetic search approach","authors":"Yangming Zhou ,&nbsp;Lingheng Liu ,&nbsp;Una Benlic ,&nbsp;Zhi-Chun Li ,&nbsp;Qinghua Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.021","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.021","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The soft-clustered vehicle routing problem is a natural generalization of the classic capacitated vehicle routing problem, where the routing decision must respect the already taken clustering decisions. It is a relevant routing problem with numerous practical applications, such as packages or parcels delivery. Population-based evolutionary algorithms have already been adapted to solve this problem. However, they usually evolve a single population and suffer from early convergence especially for large instances, resulting in sub-optimal solutions. To maintain a high diversity so as to avoid premature convergence, this work proposes a bi-population collaborative memetic search method that adopts a bi-population structure to balance between exploration and exploitation, where two populations are evolved in a cooperative way. Starting from an initial population generated by a data-driven and knowledge-guided population initialization, two heterogeneous memetic searches are then performed by employing a pair of complementary crossovers (i.e., a multi-route edge assembly crossover and a group matching-based crossover) to generate offspring solutions, and a bilevel variable neighborhood search to explore the solution space at both cluster and customer levels. Once the two evolved new populations are obtained, a cooperative evolution mechanism is applied to obtain a new population. Extensive experiments on 404 benchmark instances show that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the current state-of-the-art algorithms. In particular, the proposed algorithm discovers new upper bounds for 16 out of the 26 large-sized benchmark instances, while matching the best-known solutions for the remaining 9 large-sized instances. Ablation experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of each key algorithmic module. Finally, the inherent generality of the proposed method is verified by applying it to the well-known (hard) clustered vehicle routing problem.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55161,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Operational Research","volume":"324 3","pages":"Pages 825-838"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143532976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An iterated local search algorithm for the traveling purchaser problem","authors":"Tomás Kapancioglu,&nbsp;Raquel Bernardino","doi":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.024","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.024","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The Traveling Purchaser Problem (TPP) is a generalization of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) in which a list of items must be acquired by visiting a subset of markets. The objective is to minimize the total cost sustained along the route, including purchasing and traveling costs. Due to the NP-hard nature of the problem, solving the TPP in an exact manner is computationally challenging, implying the need for heuristic approaches to obtain quality solutions efficiently. This study proposes an algorithm based on the metaheuristic Iterated Local Search (ILS), complemented by a route configuration procedure that adjusts the subset of markets in the solution. The ILS is tested in benchmark instances, providing a performance comparison with other methods. The computational experiment for the asymmetric instances reveals the effectiveness and efficiency of the ILS, outperforming previously published results with statistical significance. Additional experiments are presented for the symmetric instances, pointing to the competitiveness and versatility of the ILS in relation to other heuristic approaches used in the literature.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55161,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Operational Research","volume":"324 3","pages":"Pages 759-772"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143583109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Platform acquisition in a triple-channel supply chain","authors":"Xiaoran Liu ,&nbsp;Lusheng Shao ,&nbsp;Xuwei Qin","doi":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.033","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.033","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Motivated by the observation that some online retail platforms begin to enter offline channels by acquiring traditional retailers, this paper studies the impact of platform acquisition in a context where a manufacturer sells a product via an online agency selling and two offline reselling channels. Considering three changes brought by platform acquisition in practice, namely, showrooming, “pay online but pickup in store (POPS)” and pricing power transfer effects, we investigate how platform acquisition impacts the firms’ pricing behaviors and profits, customer surpluses, and social welfare. Our analysis shows that, although acquisition may hurt the upstream manufacturer and the non-acquired traditional retailer, it always makes the platform and the acquired traditional retailer better off as a whole. Further, it may benefit the total supply chain and improve consumer surpluses and social welfare. Interestingly, platform acquisition leads to a demand siphon force (shifting demand from the non-acquired channel to the two channels related to acquisition) when platform acquisition brings strong showrooming and POPS effects; otherwise, it leads to the opposite demand spillover force. Finally, regarding the decision on the acquisition fee, there exists a moderate range that enables the platform and offline retailer to achieve a win-win situation. These findings collectively provide some valuable insights for decision-makers to understand the impacts of platform acquisition in a competitive triple-channel supply chain.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55161,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Operational Research","volume":"324 3","pages":"Pages 1035-1046"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143641017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Streamlining emergency response: A K-adaptable model and a column-and-constraint-generation algorithm","authors":"Paula Weller,&nbsp;Fabricio Oliveira","doi":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.016","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.016","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Emergency response refers to the systematic response to an unexpected, disruptive occurrence such as a natural disaster. The response aims to mitigate the consequences of the occurrence by providing the affected region with the necessary supplies. A critical factor for a successful response is its timely execution, but the unpredictable nature of disasters often prevents quick reactionary measures. Preallocating the supplies before the disaster takes place allows for a faster response, but requires more overall resources because the time and place of the disaster are not yet known. This gives rise to a trade-off between how quickly a response plan is executed and how precisely it targets the affected areas. Aiming to capture the dynamics of this trade-off, we develop a <span><math><mi>K</mi></math></span>-adjustable robust model, which allows a maximum of <span><math><mi>K</mi></math></span> second-stage decisions, i.e., response plans. This mitigates tractability issues and allows the decision-maker to seamlessly navigate the gap between the readiness of a proactive yet rigid response and the accuracy of a reactive yet highly adjustable one. The approaches we consider to solve the <span><math><mi>K</mi></math></span>-adaptable model are twofold: Via a branch-and-bound method as well as a static robust reformulation in combination with a column-and-constraint generation algorithm. In a computational study, we compare and contrast the different solution approaches and assess their potential.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55161,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Operational Research","volume":"324 3","pages":"Pages 925-940"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143532975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Endogenous directed technical change for energy transition","authors":"Younes Ben Zaied, Wided Mattoussi, Alessandro Marra","doi":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.020","url":null,"abstract":"The finite nature of certain fossil fuels, which are essential inputs in production, imposes a substantial constraint on the economy's long-term growth potential. This paper develops an endogenous directed technical change model under uncertainty regarding the timing of a potential backstop technology discovery. The model directs R&amp;D towards increasing the probability of a technological breakthrough, triggering thereby a transition from a fossil fuel-dependent economy to one powered by cleaner, renewable energy sources. We derive analytical solutions using a general optimal control framework allowing to establish the Pontryagin (maximum principle) first-order optimality conditions, complemented with an adequate numerical assessment to a model of the optimal allocation of national economic resources between consumption, investment, and R&amp;D. We identify the optimal time paths for consumption in both the pre- and post-backstop adoption economies, the depletion rate of fossil fuels, investment in R&amp;D, and the utilization rate of the substitute, under two scenarios: when energy input and physical capital are substitutes in production, and when they are complements.","PeriodicalId":55161,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Operational Research","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2025-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143641015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Can blockchain implementation combat food fraud: Considering consumers’ delayed quality perceptions","authors":"Deqing Ma,&nbsp;Xueping Wu,&nbsp;Kaifu Li,&nbsp;Jinsong Hu","doi":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.028","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.028","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Food fraud is driven by unethical enterprises’ economic incentives and endures due to consumers’ delayed quality perceptions, while present solutions make it impossible for ethical firms to verify food quality in a timely and convincing manner. To that end, this paper focuses on a duopoly competition between an ethical firm (H) and an unethical firm (L) incorporating consumers’ delayed quality perceptions. Considering the industry credibility crisis that food fraud may trigger, we analytically explore the conditions and effects of firm H to combat food fraud with the aid of blockchain technology (BCT). Counterintuitively, this paper finds that quality improvements beyond industry standards are not always beneficial to firms. Indeed, firms H and L will adopt quality improvements only when marginal returns are higher or delayed perceived time of quality (DPTQ) is longer, respectively. When deciding whether to adopt BCT, H should consider not only the implementation cost and DPTQ, but also the non-monotonic impact of DPTQ on the cost threshold. In addition, it is found that the application of BCT will always motivate H to make quality improvements and further enhance the goodwill, demand, and profits, but that the effect of combating food fraud is stage-specific. Within DPTQ, BCT will only serve as a marketing tool to enhance the competitiveness of H. It is outside of DPTQ that BCT can be effective in combating food fraud, not only by accelerating L's exit from the market, but also by increasing H's market share at the same time.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55161,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Operational Research","volume":"324 3","pages":"Pages 908-924"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143532973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Product design and pricing decisions in platform-based co-creation","authors":"Siyuan Zhu ,&nbsp;Tengfei Nie ,&nbsp;Jianghua Zhang ,&nbsp;Shaofu Du","doi":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.015","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ejor.2025.02.015","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Co-creation, a new business model that requires platform enterprises, manufacturers, and even consumers to participate in product research and development, has become increasingly popular in recent years. Simultaneously, technological advances in platforms have provided a convenient channel for consumers to contribute creative ideas in co-creation activities, providing an opportunity to rebuild business models. In this study, we consider a setting where a platform enterprise, a manufacturer, and a group of consumers jointly design and produce a co-created product. We focus on how a platform impacts co-creation. In the co-creation process, the platform integrates the consumers’ ideas and chooses a product innovation design (i.e., either an aesthetic-oriented or a functionality-oriented product design), after which the manufacturer sells the co-created product in a heterogeneous market. We demonstrate that each type of product innovation design has its own scope of application, and neither is strictly dominant. We find that when the product value exerted by consumers is higher than a certain threshold, a lose-lose situation may occur for the profits of the platform and manufacturer. Furthermore, we endogenize the consumers’ effort decisions in co-creation and find that each type of product innovation design can still be the equilibrium strategy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55161,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Operational Research","volume":"324 3","pages":"Pages 893-907"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143477821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}