A unified model framework for the multi-attribute consistent periodic vehicle routing problem

Abstract

Modeling real-life transportation problems usually require the simultaneous incorporation of different variants of the classical vehicle routing problem (VRP). The periodic VRP (PVRP) is a classical extension in which routes are determined for a planning period of several days and each customer has an associated set of allowable visit schedules. This work proposes a unified model framework for PVRP that consists of multiple attributes or variants not previously addressed simultaneously, such as time-windows, time-dependence, and consistency -which guarantees the visits to customer by the same vehicle-, together with three objective functions that respond to the needs of practical problems. The numerical experimentation is focused on the effects of three factors: frequency, depot centrality, and the objective function on the performance of a general–purpose MILP solver, through the analysis of the achieved relative gaps. Results show higher sensitivity to the objective functions and to the problem sizes.