The Traveling Repairman Problem App for Mobile Phones: A Case on Perishable Product Delivery

Abstract

Delivering perishable food as soon as possible has been always a challenge for producers, amplified in recent years, by a more and more competitive global market. The problem can be tackled as a routing problem with consideration of the arrival time at the customers’ location, taking into account the perishability of the products planned to be delivered. Since in real-world applications customers’ requests dynamically arrive during the execution of the transportation process, building vehicle routes in an on-going fashion is a challenge to be addressed. This paper describes a mobile solution that heavily relies on the use of mobile phones and integrates a well known heuristic method for the problem at hand. A case concerning the delivery of perishable food to a set of restaurants will serve as a base for illustrating the potential benefits of such a system.