Generating the initial solution is always a crucialpoint when applying local search, since it affects significantly the running time of the algorithm. In order to improve the generation of the initial solutions, various existing heuristics can be applied, such as sequential insertion heuristics which simply add the following node to the existing tour based on its location. More sophisticated heuristics are the two-phased ones, which decompose
the problem into a clustering- and a routing problem,with possible feedback loops between the two stages. Cluster-First Route-Second (CFRS) algorithms perform a single clustering of the vertex set and then determine a vehicle route on each cluster. The best-known CFRS algorithm is the Fisher-Jaikumar algorithm which solves the General Assignment Problem (GAP) to form the clusters
The local search starts from the initial solution and subsequently moves from the present solution to a neighboring solution in the search space where each solution has only a relatively small number of feasible neighbor solutions and each of the movements is determine by neighborhood’s operators. Generally, the operators have two main groups according to the scope: inter-route and intra-route-operators. Intra-route operators are used for shortening the length of a related path, by contrast with inter-route operators which are able to influence the number of the required vehicles as well via
affecting two routes When applying local search, the combination of the neighborhood functions produces the next local optimum solution.
Although the most general forms of the VRP can be solved effectively with the above approaches, the milkrun planning problem is hard to interpret as a simple graph-search problem, and the general initial solution heuristics are difficult to transform for this problem. The mapping process of the factory layout also requires special processing; therefore general solution methods cannot be applied easily for such a special problem.