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Vehicle Routing Problem

Vehicle Routing Problem helps the logistic team which delivers goods to customers to plan the optimal delivery routes of the shortest traveling distance, least cost, and shortest time. It remains rather difficult to find the solutions for this kind of practical problems by integrating the GIS network data with mathematic models or algorithms. Since the capacity of each vehicle might differ, the quantity to deliver and to pick up from a depot might differ, too. The network cost also depends on the road length, speed and traffic. The time window and the service time might also influence the service quality. Vehicle Routing Problem solution provided in SuperGIS has considered the factors mentioned above to help find out the optimal solution for customers and vehicle.

Refer to the figure below, now we have two cars (A and B) to offer service. Due to the capacity and cost restrictions, they can serve respectively 2 and 3 customers.

VRP

•If the vehicle has time window and the company has to pay for overtime, the company will avoid overtime of the vehicles when arranging the delivery course. In this case, we can see if car A is sent to serve customer y, it will overtime by 17 minutes. So, to avoid overtime, we might have to send car B (or other cars) to serve.

•If not only the vehicle has the service time, but the customer also has a specific service time:

We will find out that if the driver B has to serve two bothering customers, it will be quite a difficulty.