To promote research and application on real-world problems related to Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization (MOCO) such as Vehicle Routing and Bin Packing, Huawei Technologies organized a “Logistics Competition” at the 11th International Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization (EMO 2021). The competition attracted over 485 participants to compete in two tracks with real business scenarios generated by Huawei.
Mr Han Zhang, our research student, received a Silver Prize of Track 1 in the competition with his project titled “Solving Combinatorial Optimization Problems in Smart Logistics Based on Meta-heuristic Algorithms” under the supervision of Prof. Qing Li, our Chair Professor and Head.
In the real-world logistics and supply chain management systems, many combinatorial optimization problems occur and the number of solutions increases exponentially with the scale of the problems. In this project, some common problems in smart logistics including facility location problem (FLP), capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP), pickup and delivery problem (PDP), and three-dimensional container loading problem (3D-CL) were expected to be formulated as the combinatorial optimization problems which could be solved effectively and efficiently by the meta-heuristic algorithms.
“Prof. Qing Li is very nice and patient and he gives me very useful guidance about how to do research, as well as how to analyze and solve problems step by step. Under his supervision, I enjoy the research journey very much,” Han shared. Being one of the top three winners, Han was also invited to give a spot-light talk at EMO 2021.
