Improving Performance of Vehicle Routing Algorithms using GPS Data

Abstract

Two important problems distribution companies face on a daily basis are the routing and tracking of a vehicle fleet. The former is being overcome by solving the famous vehicle routing problem (VRP), a generalization of the traveling salesman problem (TSP), and the later analyses GPS data to get information of the moving vehicles. In this paper a system which uses GPS data to track the vehicles, analyze their routes and improve input data needed for the algorithm for the vehicle routing problem is described. In a real-world scenario, implementing an VRP algorithm is not enough. Algorithms which analyze GPS data ensure that the VRP algorithm takes correct input data and that the driven routes are those that the algorithm proposed.