Chapter 4 Analysis of vehicle routing and inventory-routing problems

Abstract

This chapter discusses analysis of vehicle routing (VRP) and inventory-routing problems. The main reason for an analytical analysis of a heuristic algorithm is to identify classes of the VRP in which a specific heuristic is highly efficient. In addition, this approach enables us to better understand models that integrate vehicle routing with other issues important to the firm such as integrating inventory control and vehicle routing. The chapter introduces and analyzes a model that incorporates bin-packing features into the vehicle routing problem. It is shown how such results can be used in integrating inventory control and vehicle routing costs. The analysis to the multi-depot case is generalized. The chapter concludes with a brief statement on the impact of analytical analyses on the development of new algorithms for vehicle routing problems as well as its use in practice. © 1995, Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.