New heuristics for the fleet size and mix vehicle routing problem with time windows

In the Fleet Size and Mix Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (FSMVRPTW) customers need to be serviced in their time windows at minimal costs by a heterogeneous fleet. In this paper new heuristics for the FSMVRPTW are developed. The performance of the heuristics is shown to be significantly higher than that of any previous heuristic approach and therefore likely to achieve better solutions to practical routing problems