Optimal Solution of Vehicle Routing Problems with Fractional Objective Function

TL;DR

This paper introduces an exact method for solving vehicle routing problems with fractional objective functions, combining techniques from fractional programming and vehicle routing, validated through extensive numerical experiments.

Contribution

It presents new dual and primal bounding procedures integrated into an exact method for fractional vehicle routing problems, extending existing variants.

Findings

The proposed method effectively solves VRPs with fractional objectives.

Numerical experiments confirm the approach's validity.

The method extends traditional VRP variants to fractional objectives.

Abstract

This work proposes a first extensive analysis of the Vehicle Routing Problem with Fractional Objective Function (vrpfof). We investigate how the principal techniques used either in the context of fractional programming or in the context of vehicle routing problems interact. We present new dual and primal bounding procedures which have been incorporated in an exact method. The method proposed allows to extend specific variants of \vrp\ to their counterpart with a fractional objective function. Extensive numerical experiments prove the validity of our approach.