Comparative Study of Algorithms Metaheuristics Based Applied to the Solution of the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem

Abstract

This chapter presents the best-known heuristics and metaheuristics that are applied to solve the capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP), which is the generalization of the TSP, in which the nodes are visited by more than one route. To find out which algorithm obtains better results, there are 30 test instances used, which are grouped into 3 sets of problems according to the position of the nodes. The study begins with an economic impact analysis of the transportation sector in companies, which represents up to 20% of the final cost of the product. This case study focuses on the CVRP for its acronym capacitated vehicle routing problem, analyzing the best-known heuristics such as Clarke & Wright and sweep, and the algorithms GRASP and simulated annealing metaheuristics based.