An Exact Solution Framework for Multitrip Vehicle-Routing Problems with Time Windows

Abstract

The need to reduce pollution and traffic in city centers requires the use of small vans, electric vehicles, and drones to distribute goods. Because of autonomy and capacity issues, these vehicles need to perform multiple trips from/to the depot during the day. The category of decision-making problems modeling such distribution problems are known as multitrip vehicle-routing problems (MTVRPs), which generalize the well-known vehicle-routing problem by allowing vehicles to perform multiple trips per day. Several MTVRPs are solved in the literature with different mathematical models and algorithms. In “An Exact Solution Framework for Multitrip Vehicle-Routing Problems with Time Windows,” R. Paradiso, R. Roberti, D. Laganà, and W. Dullaert propose a single algorithm that can solve, to optimality, the MTVRP with capacity and time windows constraints and four variants of this problem featuring additional operational constraints. The proposed framework significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms from the literature.