Learning Large Neighborhood Search for Maritime Inventory Routing Optimization

Abstract

Maritime inventory routing optimization is an important yet challenging combinatorial optimization problem. We propose a machine learning-based local search approach for finding feasible solutions of large-scale maritime inventory routing optimization problems. Given the combinatorial complexity of the problems, we integrate a graph neural network-based neighborhood selection method to enhance local search efficiency. Our approach enables a structured exploration of different neighborhoods by imitating an optimization-based expert neighborhood selection policy, improving solution quality while maintaining computational efficiency. Through extensive computational experiments on realistic instances, we demonstrate that our method outperforms direct mixed-integer programming as well as benchmark local search approaches in solution time and solution quality.