A Bicriteria Skill Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows and an Application to Pushback Operations at Airports

Abstract

In the Skill Vehicle Routing Problem (Skill VRP), each vehicle is assigned a skill, representing its qualification. A vehicle is able to serve a node if its skill is sufficiently large regarding the skill requirement of the node. In this paper, we move the focus of the cost-oriented Skill VRP to time-related aspects. To that end, we add time window restrictions and, secondly, design an alternative, time-oriented, objective function. This problem extension is motivated by an application in the airport ground control where time issues play a major role. We present a mathematical model and carry out an extensive numerical study that includes load-balancing aspects as well as a multi-objective analysis.