The Evolution of the Vehicle Routing Problem (eBook)

This book presents state-of-the-art research and practice in optimization routing, specifically the vehicle routing problem (VRP).   Since its introduction in the late 1950s, the VRP has been a very significant area of research and practice in operations research.  Vehicles are used to make deliveries and for pick-ups every day and everywhere.  Companies such as Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and DHL use route optimization to reduce mileage, fuel use, number of trucks on the road, and carbon dioxide emissions.  The authors compile and analyze 135 survey and review articles on vehicle routing topics published between 2005 and 2022 in an effort to make key observations about publication and trend history, summarize the overall contributions in the field, and identify trends in VRP research and practice.   The authors have compiled published research on models, algorithms, and applications for specific areas, including: alternative and multiple objectives; arc routing and general routing; drones, last-mile delivery, and urban distribution; dynamic and stochastic routing; green routing; inventory routing; loading constraints; location-routing; multiple depots; pickup and delivery and dial-a-ride problems; rich and multi-attribute routing; routing over time; shipping; two-echelon, collaborative, and inter-terminal problems; specific variants, benchmark datasets, and software; and exact algorithms and heuristics.  In addition, the book discusses how vehicle routing problems are among the most widely studied problems in combinatorial optimization due to the mathematical complexity and practical significance.

Bruce Golden, Ph.D., is the France-Merrick Chair in Management Science in the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. His research interests include vehicle routing, logistics, combinatorial optimization, and networks. Over the past 47 years, Professor Golden has made numerous and substantial contributions to the field of vehicle routing and logistics. In recognition of this, he was selected as the second Verolog Fellow and he received the 2019 Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award in Transportation Science. In parallel with his academic contributions to the field of vehicle routing, he founded a company with several colleagues in 1980 in order to implement the latest advances in vehicle routing and business logistics. By the late 1980s, this company (RouteSmart Technologies, Inc.) specialized in the design and licensing of vehicle routing software. Bruce and his partners successfully grew the company and sold it in late 1998. The surviving company continues to thrive. Today, RouteSmart is the dominant routing solution in the Postal/Parcel, Utilities, Public Works, and Newspaper markets in the U.S., where routes can range from a couple of hundred to thousands of stops.