A Review of Heuristic Approaches to Vehicle Routing Problems

This study reviews the approaches that are based on heuristic methods and include processed GPS data in their solutions for vehicle routing problems. Vehicle routing problems are challenging given their constraints and complexity. Due to the nature of vehicle routing, the appropriate solution must be found within a reasonable timeframe. However, it is not possible to scan the entire solution space and find the optimum solution within the ideal timeframe when the problem's complexity increases because of the number of points and the constraints. In order to solve these kinds of situations, the aim is finding the optimum solution, or the optimum solution as close as possible. This situation reveals some scenarios where heuristic and meta-heuristic algorithms are used as solution algorithms to routing problems. GPS data is included in the solution algorithms to increase the performance of heuristic algorithms and routing solutions. As a result of the processed data, environmental factors such as congestion points, average speed on the route and traffic density according to hours are also taken into account. In this way, more consistent solutions are developed for real-life applications.