This book is an introduction to the development of metaheuristics dedicated to vehicle routing problems. To begin with, a general presentation familiarizes the reader with the related field of logistics and combinatorial optimization. This preamble is completed with a description of significant heuristic methods classically used to provide feasible solutions quickly, and local improvement moves […]
This book is an introduction to the development of metaheuristics dedicated to vehicle routing problems. To begin with, a general presentation familiarizes the reader with the related field of logistics and combinatorial optimization. This preamble is completed with a description of significant heuristic methods classically used to provide feasible solutions quickly, and local improvement moves widely used to search for enhanced solutions. The overview of these fundamentals allows the reader to appreciate the core of the work devoted to an analysis of metaheuristic methods for vehicle routing problems. These methods are discussed according to their features of working either on a sequence of single solutions, or on a set of solutions, or even by hybridizing various components. Several implementations are given as illustrative examples, along with applications to different typical routing problems.