Heuristic algorithms for solving the generalized vehicle routing problem

Abstract

The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is one of the most famous combinatorial optimization problems and has been intensively studied due to the many practical applications in the field of distribution, collection, logistics, etc. We study a generalization of the VRP called the generalized vehicle routing problem (GVRP) where given a partition of the nodes of the graph into node sets we want to find the optimal routes from the given depot to the number of predefined clusters which include exactly one node from each cluster. The purpose of this paper is to present heuristic algorithms to solve this problem approximately. We present constructive algorithms and local search algorithms for solving the generalized vehicle routing problem.