Special issue on vehicle routing and scheduling: recent trends and advances

Abstract

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) has evolved into one of the most studied optimization problems in the transportation and operations research literature, with numerous applications encountered across a wide array of practical contexts. In broad terms, the VRP deals with the optimal assignment of a set of customer orders to a fleet of vehicles and the determination of the corresponding service sequences over a period of time. The problem comes in many variants, which differ based on the type of operation, the time frame for decision making, the objective, the types of constraints that must be adhered to, and in certain cases, the dynamic and/or stochastic features present. As a result of their combinatorial nature and intrinsic complexity, vehicle routing and scheduling problems have led to major developments in both the realms of exact and metaheuristic algorithms. For a complete discussion of the field, interested readers are referred to a number of books [4,9,10,15,19] and recent survey papers [1–3,5–8,11–14,16–18,20,21]. Despite the progress and contributions made in recent years, many questions remain unanswered, and new ones are constantly emerging. The aim of this special issue was to compile original high-quality papers that address recent trends and advances in the theory, development, and application of optimization methods for Vehicle Routing and Scheduling problems. Overall, the issue received an overwhelming response from the community and, after a rigorous review process, a number of papers were