Split Delivery Weighted Vehicle Routing Problem: Comparison perspective

In real-word cargo transportation practice, the neglect of cargo weight referring to typical Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) may hinder the routes from being the least-cost ones. Thus, this paper proposes the Split-Delivery Weighted Vehicle Routing Problem (SDWVRP), which consists of constructing optimal routes, with respect to constrains on vehicle capacity and cargo weight, to serve a given set of customers with minimum cost. Large sets of benchmark instances classified in Cluster, Random and Mixed type of distributions are calculated to analyze the influence of SDWVRP over customer geographical distribution. Comparisons between the model of SDWVRP and SDVRP and WVRP have clearly demonstrated the effectiveness and applicability of SDWVRP modeling in practical activities. We have taken a special insight into the impact of customers´ weight variance and mean weight on cost-savings of SDWVRP over WVRP. Referring to the results of computational experiments, the benefit of Split-Delivery for WVRP comparing to that of SDVRP primarily lies in its impact on geographic position and loading weight feature. While comparing to WVRP, SDWVRP tends to bring about more substantial cost-savings. The cost-saving of SDWVRP, simultaneously is significantly influenced by mean and variance of customers´ demands and vehicle capacity.