VEHICLE ROUTING AND SCHEDULING

Routing:
A vehicle route is a sequence of pickup and/or delivery points
which the vehicle must travel in which the starting and ending point
must be at the depot or domicile. This process is known as vehicle
routing.
Scheduling:
A vehicle schedule is a sequence of pickup and/or delivery
points together with an associated set of arrival and departure times
and the vehicle must travel the points in the designated order at the
specified time. This process is known as vehicle scheduling.

Objectives of Vehicle routing and scheduling:

 To minimize number of vehicles
 To minimize the travelling distance
 To minimize the labour force
 To satisfy customer requirements
 To maximize orders and volume delivered per unit
distance

Types of Routings done:

1) Freight Routing- Routing of shipments
2) Service Routing- Dispatching of technicians
3) Passenger Routing- Transportation of passengers
Characteristics of Routing and Scheduling:
(i) Nodes- These are the points which are used to denote to
which the vehicle must reach in order to pickup or deliver something.
Nodes are represented by means of a circle.
(ii) Arcs- The line segments connecting the nodes are called as
arcs. Arcs may describe the time, cost or distance required to travel
from one node to another.
(iii) Route- The sequence in which the nodes or arcs are to be
visited.
(iv) Schedule- Specifies the time in which each node has to be
visited.
(v) Feasibility- Minimum-cost solution or any other criterion
like time or distance travelled is subject to the tour being feasible.
In order to attain a feasible solution:-

 The tour must include all nodes

 A node must be visited only once
 A tour must start and end at the depot
Models used for VRS:
1) Travelling Salesman problem:
The objective of the TSP is to find the shortest tour which
should cover all the nodes, visiting the nodes only once and returning
back to the starting point or node.
2) Vehicle routing problem:
In the VRP a number of vehicles located at a central depot has
to serve a set of customers who are geographically dispersed. Each
vehicle has a given capacity and each customer has a given demand
and the objective is to minimize the total distance travelled.
3) VRP with time windows:
This is somewhat similar to the previous one which there will be
a given capacity for the vehicle and a given customer demand. In
addition to this there will also be a time window at which the delivery
has to be done to the customers.
4) Pickup and Delivery with time windows:
In the PDPTW a number of vehicles has to serve a number of
transportation requests. Each transportation request specifies the size
of the load to be transported, the location where is to be picked up
plus a time window and the location to be delivered plus a time
window.
Practical Considerations:
(i) Single Vs Multiple depots
(ii) Vehicle capacity

 Homogeneous Vs Heterogeneous
 Volume Vs Weight
(iii) Driver Availability
(iv) Delivery windows

 Hard Vs Soft
 Single Vs Multiple
(v) Service Requirements

 Max ride time

 Max wait time
 Fixed and variable delivery times
 Fixed and variable regions/route