Metaheuristics For Vehicle Routing Problems

This book is dedicated to metaheuristics as applied to vehicle routing problems. Several implementations are given as illustrative examples, along with applications to several typical vehicle routing problems. As a first step, a general presentation intends to make the reader more familiar with the related field of logistics and combinatorial optimization. This preamble is completed with a description of significant heuristic methods classically used to provide feasible solutions quickly, and local improvement moves widely used to search for enhanced solutions. The overview of these fundamentals allows appreciating the core of the work devoted to an analysis of metaheuristic methods for vehicle routing problems. Those methods are exposed according to their feature of working either on a sequence of single solutions, or on a set of solutions, or even by hybridizing metaheuristic approaches with others kind of methods.

In a unified and carefully developed presentation, this book systematically examines recent developments in VRP. The book focuses on a portfolio of significant technical advances that have evolved over the past few years for modeling and solving vehicle routing problems and VRP variations. Reflecting the most recent scholarship, this book is written by one of the top research scholars in Vehicle Routing and is one of the most important books in VRP to be published in recent times.

Vehicle routing problems, among the most studied in combinatorial optimization, arise in many practical contexts (freight distribution and collection, transportation, garbage collection, newspaper delivery, etc.). Operations researchers have made significant developments in the algorithms for their solution, and Vehicle Routing: Problems, Methods, and Applications, Second Edition reflects these advances. The text of the new edition is either completely new or significantly revised and provides extensive and complete state-of-the-art coverage of vehicle routing by those who have done most of the innovative research in the area; it emphasizes methodology related to specific classes of vehicle routing problems and, since vehicle routing is used as a benchmark for all new solution techniques, contains a complete overview of current solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. It also includes several chapters on important and emerging applications, such as disaster relief and green vehicle routing.

TEODOR GABRIEL CRAINIC, DIRECTOR The Centre for Research on Transportation (C.R.T.) was founded in 1971 by the Universite de Montreal. From 1988 on, it is jointly managed by the Universite de Montreal and its affiliated schools, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales and Ecole Poly technique. Professors, students and researchers from many institutions in the Montreal area join forces at the C.R.T. to analyze transportation, logistics and telecommunication systems from a multidisciplinary perspective. The C.R.T. pursues three major, complementary objectives: training of high-level specialists; the advancement of knowledge and technology; the transfer of technology towards industry and the public sector. Its main field of expertise is the develop ment of quantitative and computer-based models and methods for the analysis of urban, regional and intercity transportation networks, as well as telecommunication systems. This applies to the study of passenger and commodity flows, as well as to the socioeconomic aspects of transportation: policy, regulation, economics. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the C.R.T. offered the opportunity to evaluate past accomplishments and to identify future trends and challenges. Five colloquia were thus organized on major research and application themes that also reflected our main research areas. They gathered together internationally renowned researchers who linked recent scientific and technological advances to modeling and methodological challenges waiting to be tackled, particularly concerning new problems and applica tions, and the increasingly widespread use of new technologies.

Metaheuristics exhibit desirable properties like simplicity, easy parallelizability, and ready applicability to different types of optimization problems. After a comprehensive introduction to the field, the contributed chapters in this book include explanations of the main metaheuristics techniques, including simulated annealing, tabu search, evolutionary algorithms, artificial ants, and particle swarms, followed by chapters that demonstrate their applications to problems such as multiobjective optimization, logistics, vehicle routing, and air traffic management. The authors are leading researchers in this domain, with considerable teaching and applications experience, and the book will be of value to industrial practitioners, graduate students, and research academics.

This book presents state-of-the-art research and practice in optimization routing, specifically the vehicle routing problem (VRP). Since its introduction in the late 1950s, the VRP has been a very significant area of research and practice in operations research. Vehicles are used to make deliveries and for pick-ups every day and everywhere. Companies such as Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and DHL use route optimization to reduce mileage, fuel use, number of trucks on the road, and carbon dioxide emissions. The authors compile and analyze 135 survey and review articles on vehicle routing topics published between 2005 and 2022 in an effort to make key observations about publication and trend history, summarize the overall contributions in the field, and identify trends in VRP research and practice. The authors have compiled published research on models, algorithms, and applications for specific areas, including: alternative and multiple objectives; arc routing and general routing; drones, last-mile delivery, and urban distribution; dynamic and stochastic routing; green routing; inventory routing; loading constraints; location-routing; multiple depots; pickup and delivery and dial-a-ride problems; rich and multi-attribute routing; routing over time; shipping; two-echelon, collaborative, and inter-terminal problems; specific variants, benchmark datasets, and software; and exact algorithms and heuristics. In addition, the book discusses how vehicle routing problems are among the most widely studied problems in combinatorial optimization due to the mathematical complexity and practical significance.

The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is one of the most famous combinatorial optimization problems. In simple terms, the goal is to determine a set of routes with overall minimum cost that can satisfy several geographical scattered - mands. A ?eet of vehicles located in one or more depots is available to ful?ll the requests. A large number of variants exist, adding di?erent constraints to the original de?nition. Some examples are related to the number of depots, the ordering for visiting the customers or to time windows specifying a desirable period to arrive to a given location. The original version of this problem was proposed by Dantzig and Ramser in 1959 [1]. In their seminal paper, the authors address the calculation of a set of optimal routes for a ?eet of gasoline delivery trucks. Since then, the VRP has attractedtheattentionofalargenumberofresearchers.Aconsiderablepartofits success is a consequence of its practical interest, as it resembles many real-world problems faced everyday by distribution and transportation companies, just to mention a few applications areas. In this context, the development of e?cient optimization techniques is crucial. They are able to provide new and enhanced solutionstologisticoperations,andmaythereforeleadtoasubstantialreduction in costs for companies. Additionally, and from a research oriented perspective, the VRP is a challenging NP-hard problem providing excellent benchmarks to access the e?ciency of new global optimization algorithms.