This paper focuses on solving a variant of the vehicle routing problem (VRP) in which a time window is associated with each customer service and some services require simultaneous visits from different vehicles to be accomplished. The problem is therefore called the VRP with time windows and synchronization constraints (VRPTWSyn). We present a simulated annealing algorithm (SA) that incorporate...

In this paper, we present an intelligent solution system for a vehicle routing problem (VRP) with rigid time window in urban distribution. The solution has three stages. The first stage uses Clustering Analysis in Data Mining to classify all customers by a number of attributes, such as distance, demand level, the density of customer, and city layout. The second stage introduces how to generate ...

In this paper we describe a new parallel tabu search heuristic for the vehicle routing problem with time window constraints (VRPTW). The neighborhood structure we propose is based on simple customer shifts and allows to consider infeasible interim-solutions. Similar to the column generation approach used in exact algorithms , all routes generated by the tabu search heuristic are collected in a ...

This paper presents a branch-and-cut algorithm for the Time Window Assignment Vehicle Routing Problem (TWAVRP), the problem of assigning time windows for delivery before demand volume becomes known. A novel set of valid inequalities, the precedence inequalities, is introduced and multiple separation heuristics are presented. In our numerical experiments the branch-and-cut algorithm is 3.8 times...

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 Genet...

This paper provides a review of the recent developments that had a major impact on the current state-ofthe-art exact algorithms for the vehicle routing problem (VRP). The paper reviews mathematical formulations, relaxations and recent exact methods for two of the most important variants of the VRP: the capacitated VRP (CVRP) and the VRP with time windows (VRPTW). The paper also reports a compar...

In order to improve the efficiency of vehicle objective, the paper addresses the problem of multi-depot vehicle routing with time window. An adaptive genetic algorithm based on the artificial bee colony algorithm is developed for the solution process of the multi-depot vehicle routing problem. The new algorithm provides not only with the strong global search capability, but also the strong loca...

This paper is the second part of a work on the application of new search techniques for the vehicle routing problem with time windows. It describes GENEROUS, the GENEtic ROUting System, which is based on the natural evolution paradigm. Under this paradigm, a population of solutions evolves from one generation to the next by "mating" parent solutions to form new offspring solutions that exhibit ...

A typical vehicle routing problem can be described as the problem of designing least cost routes from one depot to a set of geographically scattered points (cities, stores, warehouses, schools, customers etc). The routes must be designed in such a way that each point is visited only once by exactly one vehicle, all routes start and end at the depot, and the total demands of all points on one pa...