The Fixed Routes Problem is a variation of the Vehicle Routing Problem in which the routes that have to be constructed will be operated unchanged for an extended period of time while the customer demands within that period will vary. If, in a delivery scenario, a vehicle cannot satisfy the demand of a customer it musts return to the depot for replenishment before continuing its route. The fixed...

A of April 2007, the European Union has new regulations concerning driver working hours. These rules force the placement of breaks and rests into vehicle routes when consecutive driving or working time exceeds certain limits. This paper proposes a large neighborhood search method for the vehicle routing problem with time windows and driver regulations. In this method, neighborhoods are explored...

This paper proposes an abstraction of emerging vehicle routing problems, the Vehicle Routing Problem with Black Box Feasibility. In this problem the routes of a basic VRP need to satisfy an unknown set of constraints. A black box function to test the feasibility of a route is provided. This function is considered of non-linear complexity (in the length of the route). Practical examples of such ...

Column generation is a well-known mathematical programming technique based on two components: a master problem, which selects optimal columns (variables) in a restricted pool of columns, and a subproblem that feeds this pool with potentially good columns until an optimality criterion is met. Embedded in Branch and Price algorithms, this solution approach proved to be very efficient in the conte...

We present an optimization algorithm developed for a provider of software planning tools for distribution logistics companies. The algorithm computes a daily plan for a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles, that can depart from different depots and must visit a set of customers for delivery operations. Besides multiple capacities and time windows associated with depots and customers, the problem als...

Transportation in economic systems such as services, production and distribution enjoys a special and important position and provides a significant portion of the country's gross domestic product. Improvements in transportation system mean improvements in the traveling routes and the elimination of unnecessary distances in any system. The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is one of the practical co...

In this paper, we formulate the vehicle routing problem with time windows and temporal dependencies. The problem is an extension of the well studied vehicle routing problem with time windows. In addition to the usual constraints, a scheduled time of one visit may restrain the scheduling options of other visits. Special cases of temporal dependencies are synchronization and precedence constraint...

In this article we introduce a new exact solution approach to the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands (CVRPSD). In particular, we consider the case where all customer demands are distributed independently and where each customer’s demand follows a Poisson distribution. The CVRPSD can be formulated as a Set Partitioning Problem. We show that, under the above assumptions o...