The Distribution and Pickup of Goods

Abstract

The literature of vehicle scheduling problems is rich with different approaches, which try to schedule the distribution of products to a network of clients. In this case, the vehicle routing problem with deliveries and pickups of goods is an extension of vehicle routing problem in which goods are transported from a depot (or multiple depots) to customers, as well from customers to the depots. There is tremendous work in the literature of this problem. Freight transport management deals with all distribution problems along the supply chain. This chapter presents a comprehensive review and survey of this literature. The literature is classified into four fundamental classes according to the way of the customers' visit and methods used for solving. Then different variants are generated according to the elements of the proposed framework. During this chapter, based on a proposed framework, the authors analyze the literature of the vehicle routing problem with deliveries and pickups, and as a result, the researchers propose a new classification where they give a short modeling of it.