Local search-based metaheuristics for the split delivery vehicle routing problem

The split delivery vehicle routing problem is a variant of the standard vehiclerouting problem where the single-visit assumption is waived and a customer mightbe served on more than one vehicle tour. In this article we report on a studywhere we have applied the standard local search-based metaheuristics usingadaptations of the most widely used inter-tour and intra-tour exchange operatorsfor solving the standard vehicle routing problem now allowing splitting andjoining of deliveries. As we will show we could find new best solutions for 51out of 57 benchmark instances, which have been defined for this problemclass.