Metaheuristic Approaches for Vehicle Routing Problems

Routing of service vehicles are the heart of many service operations. Exclusively vehicle routing problem (VRP) plays a central role in the optimization of distribution networks. The routing of service vehicles has a major impact on the quality of the service provided. In distribution of goods and services, it is time and again required to determine a combination of least cost vehicle routes through a set of geographically scattered customers, subject to side constraints. The case most commonly studied is where all vehicles are identical. Due to the complexity involved in solving the VRP, most researchers concentrate on using meta-heuristics for solving real-life problems. In this paper, heuristic methods based on Ant Colony Optimization and Simulated Annealing algorithms are developed and search strategies are investigated. Computational results are reported on randomly generated problems. These methods significantly improve in minimizing the total distances travelled by the vehicles.