THE DELIVERY PROBLEM.
Abstract
In the delivery problem we are required to find a minimum distance (cost) system of routes for a fleet of delivery vehicles. As inputs we are given the inter-customer travel times and the quantity of product which must be supplied to each customer. In this paper we review the various formulations which have been proposed for solving the problem and present two new approaches. The first is a branch and bound algorithm which, because of its rapid increase in computation time with an increase in problem size, can optimally solve problems having at most fifteen to twenty customers. The second formulation is a heuristic programming approach which is capable of solving much larger problems, but does not guarantee an optimal solution. The paper concludes with a chapter suggesting how these two methods might be modified so as to solve many of the common variations of the basic problem. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 1967
- Accession Number
- AD0656030
Entities
People
- Robert L. Hayes
Organizations
- Carnegie Institute of Technology