An efficient transformation of the generalized vehicle routing problem

The Generalized Vehicle Routing Problem (GVRP) is the problem of designing optimal delivery or collection routes, subject to capacity restrictions, from a given depot to a number of predefined, mutually exclusive and exhaustive clusters. In this paper we describe an efficient transformation of the GVRP into a Capacitated Arc Routing Problem for which an exact algorithm and several approximate procedures are reported in literature. It constitutes the only known approach for solving the GVRP.