Maximum-Profit Routing Problem with Multiple Vehicles per Site

Abstract

We consider the Maximum-Profit Routing Problem (MPRP), a variant of pick-up routing problem introduced in [1,3], in which the goal is to maximize total profit. The original MPRP restricts vehicles to visit a site at most once. In this paper, we consider extensions of MPRP, in which a site may be visited by a vehicle multiple times. Specifically, we consider two versions: one in which the quantity to be picked up at each site is constant in time (MPRP-M), and one with time-varying supplied quantities, which increase linearly in time (MPRP-VS). For each of these versions, we come up with a constant-factor polynomial-time approximaltion scheme.