Customers' satisfaction in a dial-a-ride problem

This paper presents a general model for a dial-a-ride problem and a Simulated Annealing approach to solve it focusing on the quality of service. The model includes several distinct cases of the real problems and an objective function that treats transportation costs and customer's inconveniences. The routes are clustered and scheduled in a separate way using specific heuristic methods. The solution method is implemented in C++ and performed over a data set based on real problems. Computational results present new best known solutions with a higher level of quality of service than a recent method found in the literature.