The Correlated Vehicle Routing Problem

This paper presents a variant vehicle routing problem (VRP) to tackle the routes assignment in a lumpy demand environment, where the required capacity is affected by demand variability and the correction between the demands assigned to the routes. The correlated VRP is defined by a TSP-based formulation to minimize the distance traveled and the number of vehicles. A genetic algorithm approach is developed for solving practical problems. The computational results reveal that the correlation between the demand of customers should be evaluated and taken into consideration in the vehicle routing assigning process, which can prevent leading to either additional over or under capacity during the planning period.