| Article ID: | iaor20011809 |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Volume: | 51 |
| Issue: | 5 |
| Start Page Number: | 564 |
| End Page Number: | 573 |
| Publication Date: | May 2000 |
| Journal: | Journal of the Operational Research Society |
| Authors: | Powell S., Sariklis D. |
The open vehicle routing problem differs from the classic vehicle routing problem because the vehicles either are not required to return to the depot, or they have to return by revisiting the customers assigned to them in the reverse order. Therefore, the vehicle routes are not closed paths but open ones. A heuristic method for solving this new problem, based on a minimum spanning tree with penalties procedure, is presented. Computational results are provided.