An Algorithm for the Vehicle-dispatching Problem

The vehicle-scheduling problem involves the design of several vehicle tours to meet a given set of requirements for customers with known locations, subject to a capacity constraint for the vehicles and a distance (or time) constraint for vehicle tours. Three methods of solution are considered in this paper:A branch-and-bound approach.The "savings" approach.The 3-optimal tour method.The excessive computation time and computer storage required for the first method renders it impracticable for large problems. Ten problems are examined and the results suggest that method C is superior to the other two methods.