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Heuristic Approaches for the Fleet Size and Mix Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows

DISMI, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Via Amendola 2, 42100, Reggio Emilia, Italy
DEI, Università di Padova, Via Gradenigo 6/A, 35131, Padova, Italy
DISMI, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Via Amendola 2, 42100, Reggio Emilia, Italy
DEIS, Università di Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136, Bologna, Italy
dellamico.mauro{at}unimore.it
monaci{at}dei.unipd.it
pagani.corrado{at}unimore.it
daniele.vigo{at}unibo.it

The fleet size and mix vehicle routing problem with time windows (FSMVRPTW) is the problem of determining, at the same time, the composition and the routing of a fleet of heterogeneous vehicles aimed to serve a given set of customers. The routing problem requires us to design a set of minimum-cost routes originating and terminating at a central depot and serving customers with known demands, within given time windows. This paper develops a constructive insertion heuristic and a metaheuristic algorithm for FSMVRPTW. Extensive computational experiments on benchmark instances show that the proposed method is robust and efficient, and outperforms the previously published results.

Key Words: vehicle routing problem; time windows; heterogeneous fleet; metaheuristics
History: Received: February 2006; revised: December 2006; accepted: January 2007.

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