A Dynamic Programming Heuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows and European Community Social Legislation

In practice, apart from the problem of vehicle routing, schedulers also face the problem of finding feasible driver schedules complying with complex restrictions on drivers’ driving and working hours. To address this complex interdependent problem of vehicle routing and break scheduling, we propose a restricted dynamic programming heuristic for the vehicle routing problem with time windows and the full European social legislation on drivers’ driving and working hours. The problem we consider includes all rules in this legislation, whereas in the literature only a basic set of rules has been addressed. In addition to this basic set of rules, the legislation contains a set of modifications that allow for more flexibility. To include the legislation in the restricted dynamic programming heuristic, we propose a break