Simulation-optimization methods in vehicle routing problems: A literature review and an example

Abstract

One of the application fields of the simulation tools is Transportation and Logistics, but inside the decision making process in Transportation, the use of simulation tools to calculate optimal routes for Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs) has been scarce and infrequent. We analyze the role of simulation in the calculation of routes for delivery problems in applied vehicle routing decisions along with a description of the performance of simulation algorithms to solve the Stochastic Vehicle Routing Problem-SVRP. In the last part of the paper, a biased-randomized algorithm for solving the capacitated vehicle routing problem with two-dimensional loading (2LCVRP) is introduced, dealing with the combination of two important aspects: vehicle routing and vehicle packing. Some experimental results contribute to validate our approach as a promising one, both in terms of the quality of the solutions as in terms of the computational time needed to obtain them.