SA-based hybrid heuristic for vehicle routing problem with time deadlines

Abstract

The vehicle routing problem with time deadlines(VRPTD) is an extension of the classical vehicle routing problem(VRP) with constraints on the latest allowable time(deadline) for servicing each customer. The objective is to minimize the number of vehicles and the distance traveled without exceeding the capacity of the vehicles or violating the customer deadlines. Since it is practically impossible to obtain exact optimal solutions for large-sized problems, we developed a new SA-based hybrid heuristic which is based on a parallel nearest neighbor construction method and an unequal-improvement time policy. To show the validity of the proposed algorithm, we perform a comparative study with two existing heuristics.