A tabu search heuristic for the heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem

Abstract

The Heterogeneous Fleet Vehicle Routing Problem (HVRP) is a variant of the classical Vehicle Routing Problem in which customers are served by a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles with various capacities, fixed costs, and variable costs. This article describes a tabu search heuristic for the HVRP. On a set of benchmark instances, it consistently produces high-quality solutions, including several new best-known solutions. Scope and purpose In distribution management, it is often necessary to determine a combination of least cost vehicle routes through a set of geographically scattered customers, subject to side constraints. The case most frequently studied is where all vehicles are identical. This article proposes a solution methodology for the case where the vehicle fleet is heterogeneous. It describes an efficient tabu search heuristic capable of producing high-quality solutions on a series of benchmark test problems.