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Fifty Years of Vehicle Routing

CIRRELT and Canada Research Chair in Distribution Management, HEC Montréal, 3000, Montréal, Canada, H3T 2A7
gilbert{at}crt.umontreal.ca

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) was introduced 50 years ago by Dantzig and Ramser under the title "The Truck Dispatching Problem." The study of the VRP has given rise to major developments in the fields of exact algorithms and heuristics. In particular, highly sophisticated exact mathematical programming decomposition algorithms and powerful metaheuristics for the VRP have been put forward in recent years. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief account of this development.

Key Words: vehicle routing problem; traveling salesman problem; exact algorithms; heuristics; metaheuristics; survey
History: Received: August 2009; revised: September 2009; accepted: September 2009.