Vehicle Routing in Practice

In the first part of this lecture, we discuss how real-life vehicle routing problems (VRP) differ from academic ones. First, a classification of the VRPs based on the transportation services provided or used by companies is introduced. Then, a number of specifications related to customers, vehicles and crews are described and illustrated on practical European examples. This leads to the identification of some potential research avenues on the VRP. In the second part, we focus on methodological aspects. While a number of powerful heuristics have been developped for the classical VRP, these are of limited use in practice. Some methods are then analyzed on classical criteria such as accuracy and speed but also on attributes such as simplicity and flexibility. We illustrate how some approaches based on metaheuristics can be extended to deal with some of the real-life aspects previously described.

Frederic Semet received his Ph.D. in the Department of Mathematics, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. He is Professor at the University of Valenciennes, France and Adjunct Professor at the University of Montreal. His research interests include location analysis, transportation system design, vehicle routing. He has been involved in a variety of projects for distribution companies.