The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) is a classical Operational Research problem in which distribution services need to be optimized. Given a fleet of vehicles stationed at a depot and a set of customer requiring delivery, the CVRP aims at finding the optimal set of feasible routes such thateach customer is visited exactly once.
The CVRP is very challenging from the theoretical viewpoint but crucial for the success of industrial and service applications. Effective routing algorithms reduce consistently massive transportation costs, increase customer satisfaction by reducing delivery times and reduce CO2 emissions.
In this PhD, Rich Vehicle Routing Variants will be studied such as CVRPs “enriched” by constraints and objectives typical for real world distribution problems. A particular emphasis will be given to those applications in which customer satisfaction and environmental concerns have to be taken into account. The goal of the PhD will be designing, developing and testing effective exact and metaheuristic algorithm for these challenging class of problems.