On-Line Vehicle Routing with Time Windows: Optimization-Based Heuristics Approach for Freight Demands Requested in Real-Time

The problem of the on-line version of the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) differs from the traditional off-line problem in the dynamical arrival of requests and the execution of the partial tour during the run time. The study develops an on-line optimization-based heuristic that combined the concepts of the “on-line algorithm,” “anytime algorithm,” and local search heuristics to solve the on-line version of VRPTW. The solution heuristic is evaluated with modified Solomon’s problems. By comparing with these benchmark problems, the different results between on-line and off-line algorithms are indicated.