Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology

VEHICLE ROUTING
PROBLEM
SYED MUHAMMAD TARIQ SHAH (6222300060)

ADVISOR: ASSOC. PROF. MONGKUT PIANTANAKULCHAI

Research Progress
1st Semester, PhD Student, School of Civil Engineering and Technology
Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology, Thammasat University

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction to vehicle routing problems

2. Types of vehicle routing problems

3. Algorithms used in VRP

4. Research Direction / Next Task

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 INTRODUCTION
• Transportation and logistics management is the
most essential factor of supply chain
• A logistics system, with a lower cost, can increase
the competence of the entire chain
• In a situation where oil prices rapidly increase, the
logistics of the supply chain must be very efficient
in order to reduce the transportation costs
• Transportation causes a value addition of 5% to
20% to the total cost of goods. (Shetty et al., 2018)
• Given this impact, a lot of importance is given to
the planning of routes by logistics companies
• The objective has always been to supply all the
goods as quickly and as safely as possible while
burning as little fuel as possible
• Therefore, vehicle routing is considered an
important part in logistics

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 INTRODUCTION
• Vehicle routing is the process of selecting “best” routes in a network of links and
nodes
• Vehicle routing problem (VRP) has a received a great deal of attention from
researchers for many years and is one of the most widely studied topics in the
field of Operations Research.
• Since 1959 various VRP cases have been studied by the researchers. Dantzig &
Ramser (1959) were the first to introduce the “Truck Dispatching Problem”
• Clarke & Wright (1964) generalized this problem to a linear optimization problem
that is commonly encountered in the domain of logistics and transport

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 INTRODUCTION
• Current VRP models, however, are very different from the early models, as they
increasingly aim to incorporate real-life complexities, such as time-dependent
travel times (reflecting traffic congestion), etc
• A number of solution methods are introduced now in the academic literature as
the processing speed and memory capacity of current computers has increased
exponentially
• Nowadays VRP software are being used by thousands of companies, among
others Coca-Cola Enterprises etc (Braekers et al., 2015)

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TYPES OF VRP

Capacitated There are different variants of VRP

VRP • In capacitated VRP each vehicle starts and ends
its route at the depot
Pickup and • In pickup and delivery VRP the vehicle pickup
Delivery
and deliver goods on its route from and to the
Delivery with depot
Backhaul • In delivery backhaul vehicle pickup from depot
VRP and on its route and deliver
Multi-Depot • In multi-depot customers are served from multiple
VRP depot
• In periodic VRP customers are visited periodically
Periodic VRP • In open VRP vehicle does not return back to depot

Open VRP

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TYPES OF VRP

Capacitated
VRP Most VRPs assume that the
travel times between depots
Shortest
Pickup and and customers are constant
Distance
Delivery (calculated from distance
between customers)
Delivery with
Backhaul Time Calculate the optimized route
VRP Dependent based travel time
Multi-Depot
VRP
Use ITS and suggest optimal
Dynamic route in real time
Periodic VRP

Open VRP

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TYPES OF VRP

Capacitated
VRP Most VRPs assume that the
travel times between depots
Shortest
Pickup and and customers are constant
Distance
Delivery (calculated from distance
between customers)
Delivery with
Backhaul Time Calculate the optimized route
VRP Dependent based travel time
Multi-Depot
VRP
Use ITS and suggest optimal
Dynamic route in real time
Periodic VRP

Open VRP

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ALGORITHMS

Capacitated • Heuristics-based Clarke-Wright Savings algorithm

VRP (Shetty et al., 2018)
• Heuristics and metaheuristics algorithms (Lenstra
Pickup and and Kan, 1981)
Delivery • Memetic algorithm (MA) (Labadi et al., 2008)
• Exact and heuristic, for the PVRP (Campbell and
Delivery with Wilson, 2014)
Backhaul • Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS) and Large
VRP Neighborhood Search (LNS) for ynamic routing
Multi-Depot (Pillac et al., 2010)
VRP • Unified Tabu Search Algorithm for pickup and
delivery (Berbeglia et al., 2007)
Periodic VRP

Open VRP

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 RESEARCH DIRECTION/NEXT TASK
• More literature review
• Study each type of VRP in detail
• Study books to understand the basics of VRP
• Understand the algorithms used for vehicle routing
• Interview logistic companies to identify their VRP
• Decide research direction based the above findings
• Find research gap

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 REFERENCES
• Shetty, A., Puthusseri, K.S., Shetty, A., Shankarmani, R., 2018. A Savings Algorithm
Approach to the Truck Routing and Loading Problem. 2018 Fourth International
Conference on Research in Computational Intelligence and Communication Networks
(ICRCICN), pp. 284-290.
• Braekers, K., Ramaekers, K., Nieuwenhuyse, I., 2015. The Vehicle Routing Problem:
State of the Art Classification and Review. Computers & Industrial Engineering 99.
• Lenstra, J.K., Kan, A.H.G.R., 1981. Complexity of vehicle routing and scheduling
problems. Networks 11, 221-227.
• Shetty, A., Puthusseri, K.S., Shetty, A., Shankarmani, R., 2018. A Savings Algorithm
Approach to the Truck Routing and Loading Problem. 2018 Fourth International
Conference on Research in Computational Intelligence and Communication Networks
(ICRCICN), pp. 284-290.
• Labadi, Nacima; Prins, Christian; Reghioui, Mohamed. A memetic algorithm for the
vehicle routing problem with time windows. RAIRO - Operations Research - Recherche
Opérationnelle, Volume 42 (2008) no. 3, pp. 415-431. doi : 10.1051/ro:2008021.

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 REFERENCES
• Campbell, A.M., Wilson, J.H., 2014. Forty years of periodic vehicle routing.
Networks 63, 2-15.
• Pillac, V., Guéret, C., Medaglia, A., 2010. Dynamic Vehicle Routing: State of the Art
and Prospects.
• Berbeglia, G., Cordeau, J.-F., Gribkovskaia, I., Laporte, G., 2007. Static pickup and
delivery problems: A classification scheme and survey. TOP: An Official Journal of
the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research 15, 1-31.

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