In this paper we present and analyze the application of an Ant System to the Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls and Time Windows (VRPBTW). At the core of the algorithm we use an Insertion procedure to construct solutions. We provide results on the learning and runtime behavior of the algorithm as well as a comparison with a custom made heuristic for the problem.

In this paper the Hybrid Vehicle Routing Problem (HVRP) is introduced and formalized. This problem is an extension of the classical VRP in which vehicles can work both electrically and with traditional fuel. The vehicle may change propulsion mode at any point of time. The unitary travel cost is much lower for distances covered in the electric mode. An electric battery has a limited capacity and...

The purpose of this article is to review the literature on the topic of deterministic vehicle routing problem (VRP) and to give a review on the exact and approximate solution techniques. More specifically the approximate (meta-heuristic) solution techniques are classified into: tabu search, simulated annealing, genetic algorithm, evolutionary algorithm, hybrid algorithm, and Ant Colony Optimiza...

The Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem (SDVRP) is a relaxation of the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) where customers may be assigned to multiple routes. A new construction heuristic is developed for the SDVRP and computational results are given for thirty-two data sets from previous literature. With respect to the total travel distance, the construction heuristic compares favora...

We study an extension to the general routing problem, which deals with integrating fixed route service with the general pickup and delivery problem to create a hybrid routing problem. The primary application for such a service is a dial-a-ride system used by transit agencies to transport disabled or elderly individuals. The main aim of the integration is to reduce the vehicle miles of the on-de...

The Vehicle routing problem with multiple use of vehicles is a variant of the standard vehicle routing problem in which the same vehicle may be assigned to several routes during a given planning period. A tabu search heuristic is developed for this problem. It is shown to produce high quality solutions on a series of test problems.

In this paper, a capacitated vehicle routing problem with time windows (CVRPTW) is presented. In this work, a new idea for calculating the heuristic value to improve the performance of ant colony algorithms when solving capacitated vehicle routing problems with hard time windows is proposed. The performance of the model and the heuristic approach are evaluated by Solomon’s VRPTW benchmark probl...

This paper introduces a new class of problem, the disrupted vehicle routing problem (VRP), which deals with the disruptions that occur at the execution stage of a VRP plan. The paper then focuses on one type of such problem, in which a vehicle breaks down during the delivery and a new routing solution needs to be quickly generated to minimise the costs. Two Tabu Search algorithms are developed ...