Vehicle Routing Problem: Meta-heuristic Approaches

The purpose of this article is to review the literature on the topic of deterministic vehicle routing problem (VRP) and to give a review on the exact and approximate solution techniques. More specifically the approximate (meta-heuristic) solution techniques are classified into: tabu search, simulated annealing, genetic algorithm, evolutionary algorithm, hybrid algorithm, and Ant Colony Optimization. Each of these solution techniques is briefly discussed and a case study from the literature is presented. Keywords: VRP, Solution Methodologies, Exact Solution Methods, Heuristic Solution Techniques, Meta-heuristic Solution Techniques, Simulation.