A taxonomic review of metaheuristic algorithms for solving the vehicle routing problem and its variants

Abstract Recently, a taxonomic review of the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) literature published between 2009 and June 2015 stated that most of the surveyed articles use metaheuristics for solving the problem and its variants. As extension to that work, this paper serves two-fold objectives: first, classifying the VRP and its variants solved using metaheuristic algorithms; second, investigating the contribution of each metaheuristic algorithm in solving the VRP problems. Based on a metaheuristic classification, we classify 299 VRP articles published between 2009 and 2017. The results are analyzed to reveal the usage trends of the algorithms and the solved VRP variants for showing the ones that are most popular, and those that are promising topics for future research.