In the field of combinatorial optimization problems, the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is one of the most challenging. Defined more than 40 years ago, the problem involves designing the optimal set of routes for fleets of vehicles for the purpose of serving a given set of customers. Interest in VRP is motivated by its practical relevance as well as its considerable difficulty. The Vehicle Routing Problem covers both exact and heuristic methods developed for the VRP and some of its main variants, emphasizing the practical issues common to VRP. The book is composed of three parts containing contributions from well-known experts. The first part covers basic VRP, known more commonly as capacitated VRP. The second part covers three main variants of with time windows, backhauls, and pickup and delivery. The third part covers issues arising in real-world VRP applications and includes both case studies and references to software packages. This book will be of interest to both researchers and graduate level students in the communities of operations research and mathematical sciences. It focuses on a specific family of problems while offering a complete overview of the effective use of the most important techniques proposed for the solution of hard combinatorial problems. Practitioners will find this book particularly useful. Readers need a basic knowledge of the main methods for the solution of combinatorial optimization problems.
Paolo Toth is a Professor of Combinatorial Optimization at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Bologna. His current research interests concern the design of algorithms for combinatorial optimization and graph theory problems and their application in real-world transportation, crew management, routing, and loading problems. In July 1998, he was conferred the Euro Gold Medal award. He has published more than 90 papers internationally, has co-authored and edited several books, and serves as editor for several journals. He is currently president of the International Federation of the Operational Research Societies (IFORS) for the period of 2001-2003.
Daniele Vigo is an Associate Professor of Operations Research at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Bologna. His main research activities are in the field of combinatorial optimization, with particular interest in the design of algorithms for routing, cutting, packing, and crew management problems. He has published more than 30 papers internationally and serves as Associate Editor for the journal Operations Research.
