A Survey on the Progress of Research on Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window Constraints

This paper summarizes a survey of literatures based on M. Solomon’s original benchmark problem statement for Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window Constraint (VRPTW). The survey aims to summarize the progress and evolution of the problem statement as the years go by. We have seen many improvements on the performance of the optimization to the problem from many different algorithms like Genetic Algorithm, K-means clustering, and Simulated Annealing and so on. We have also noticed that some literature added more realistic constraint statements to the problem reflecting the practicality of the problem statement in real world situation. In this survey we study the problem statement and the many possible algorithms that can be applied to solve the problem and concludes on the pros and cons of each of them.