Vehicle routing problem: Past and future

Freight transportation is a critical part of any supply chain and has many facets, particularly when viewed from the multiple levels of decision-making. The most known problem at the operational level planning is the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), which is one of the most interesting and challenging optimization problems in the operations research literature. By definition, it consists of designing optimal collection or delivery routes for a set of vehicles from a depot to a set of geographically scattered customers, subject to various side constraints, such as vehicle capacity, time windows, precedence relations between customers, and, etc. This chapter discusses the basic principles of vehicle routing to provide readers with a complete introductory resource. More specifically, knowing the past of vehicle routing will help readers to understand the present and to prepare for the future of road freight transportation