Restricted Dynamic Programming Heuristic for the Problem of Combined Vehicle Routing and Break Scheduling

Abstract

Solving large-scale vehicle routing problems with complex additional constraints such as the problem of combined vehicle routing and break scheduling is very difficult. Even large-scale vehicle routing problems with time windows without additional constraints can only be solved to optimality for problems with tight time windows and a structure which allows only few possible solutions (Pisinger and Ropke, 2007). Therefore, heuristics and metaheuristics are mainly applied to solve these problems (Funke et al., 2005). In the following the restricted dynamic programming (DP) heuristic developed by Kok et al. (2010) is presented and utilized for solving the problem of combined vehicle routing and break scheduling both from a centralized and from a distributed decision making perspective.