I have the pleasure to present another article:

Solving vehicle routing problems with asymmetric costs and heterogeneous fleets

Authors: Rosa Herrero; Alejandro Rodríguez; José Cáceres-Cruz; Angel A. Juan

Journal: International Journal of Advanced Operations Management, 2014 Vol.6, No.1, pp.58 – 80

Abstract: The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a flourishing research area with clear applications to real-life distribution companies. However, most VRP-related academic articles assume the existence of a homogeneous fleet of vehicles and/or a symmetric cost matrix. These assumptions are not always reasonable in real-life scenarios. To contribute in closing this gap between theory and practice, we propose a hybrid methodology for solving the asymmetric and heterogeneous vehicle routing problem (AHVRP). In our approach, we consider: 1) different types of vehicle loading capacities (heterogeneous fleets); 2) asymmetric distance-based costs. The proposed approach combines a randomised version of a well-known savings heuristic with several local searches specifically adapted to deal with the asymmetric nature of costs. A computational experiment allows us to discuss the efficiency of our approach and also to analyse how routing costs vary when slight departures from the homogeneous fleet assumption are considered.

Keywords:  vehicle routing problem; VRP; heterogeneous fleets; asymmetric costs; randomised algorithms; vehicle loading capacities; distance-based costs; routing costs.

Please cite this article as:

Herrero, R., Rodríguez, A., Cáceres-Cruz, J. and Juan, A.A. (2014) ‘Solving vehicle routing problems with asymmetric costs and heterogeneous fleets’, Int. J. Advanced Operations Management, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp.58–80.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAOM.2014.059620