Metaheuristics in Vehicle Routing

The metaheuristics previously explained are now applied to a transportation problem. In modern economy goods are sourced worldwide an transportation and the organization of transportation has gained more and more attention. Transportation not only causes cost but also increases traffic, environment pollution, noise, and inefficient transportation organization may cause a decrease of the service level. There are plenty of reasons to do optimization of vehicle routes. Transportation optimization is a frequently studied problem in the context of logistics. It not only arises in collection and distribution of goods but also in service applications like taxi driving, package delivery, school bus routing, repairman routing, and so on (cf. [74]).