Hierarchical Clustering-Based Network Design Algorithm for Many-To-Many Hub Location Routing Problem

The many-to-many hub location routing problem (MMHLRP) has been attracting interest as a way to improve the efficiency of long-distance delivery. Since more commodities are delivered to urban areas than to rural areas, it is important in actual business to improve the efficiency of deliveries in which the commodities are unevenly distributed. In this work, we propose a network design algorithm utilizing customized hierarchical clustering for MMHLRP. The results of numerical experiments show that the proposed algorithm reduces the total cost compared to the conventional gravity rule-based clustering algorithm when the commodities are distributed unevenly.