A Simheuristic for the Heterogeneous Site-Dependent Asymmetric VRP with Stochastic Demands

Rich Vehicle Routing Problems (RVRPs) refer to complex and realistic extensions of the classical Vehicle Routing Problem. They constitute a hot topic in logistics due to their high number of relevant applications. This work focuses on a RVRP with the following characteristics: (a) heterogeneous fleet of vehicles, (b) site-dependency, i.e., not all types of vehicle can reach all customers, (c) asymmetric costs, and (d) stochastic demands. We formally define the problem and describe real-life applications. Our main contribution is a simheuristic-based methodology including a Successive Approximations Method for solving it. A computational experiment is carried out to illustrate the proposed methodology. Moreover, the suitability of considering a simheuristic approach is analyzed.