In this paper we consider the vehicle routing problem with soft time window constraints (VRPSTW), in which vehicles are allowed to service customers before and after the earliest and latest time window bounds, respectively. This relaxation comes at the expense of appropriate penalties that re3ect the e4ect that time window violations have on the customers’ satisfaction. The problem is of partic...

We propose local search algorithms for the vehicle routing problem with soft time window constraints. The time window constraint for each customer is treated as a penalty function, which is very general in the sense that it can be non-convex and discontinuous as long as it is piecewise linear. In our algorithm, we use local search to assign customers to vehicles and to find orders of customers ...

In this paper, we formulate the problem of trusted routing as a transaction of services over a complex networked environment. We present definitions from service-oriented environments which unambiguously capture the difference between trust and reputation relations. We show that the trustworthiness measures associated with these relations have a linear order embedded in them. Identifying this o...

This paper considers a multi-period, multi-product inventory-routing problem in a two-level supply chain consisting of a distributor and a set of customers. This problem is modeled with the aim of minimizing bi-objectives, namely the total system cost (including startup, distribution and maintenance costs) and risk-based transportation. Products are delivered to customers by some heterogeneous ...

One of the main critical steps that should be taken during natural disasters is the assignment and distribution of resources among affected people. In such situations, this can save many lives. Determining the demands for critical items (i.e., the number of injured people) is very important. Accordingly, a number of casualties and injured people have to be known during a disaster. Obtaining an ...

The solution of routing problems with soft time windows has valuable practical applications. Soft time window solutions are needed when: (a) the number of routes needed for hard time windows exceeds the number of available vehicles, (b) a study of cost-service tradeoffs is required, or (c) the dispatcher has qualitative information regarding the relative importance of hard time-window constrain...

this paper presents a multi-criteria vehicle routing problem with soft time windows (vrpstw) to mini-mize fleet cost, routes cost, and violation of soft time windows penalty. in this case, the fleet is heterogene-ous. the vrpstw consists of a number of constraints in which vehicles are allowed to serve customers out of the desirable time window by a penalty. it is assumed that this relaxation a...