A two-stage heuristic approach for the newspaper delivery problem

In this article we study newspaper delivery problems arising in a major press company in Korea. Newspapers are to be delivered to the local distribution centers in time from several main distribution centers. The problem is a very complicated one which combines set partitioning, multi-vehicle routing with time window, and scheduling problems. We divide the whole problem into two stages and develop a seemingly efficient heuristic method combined with simulated annealing algorithm. A numerical example is given to demonstrate our method.