| Article ID: | iaor20062102 | 
| Country: | United Kingdom | 
| Volume: | 55 | 
| Issue: | 12 | 
| Start Page Number: | 1298 | 
| End Page Number: | 1310 | 
| Publication Date: | Dec 2004 | 
| Journal: | Journal of the Operational Research Society | 
| Authors: | Chiang W.-C., Russell R.A. | 
| Keywords: | heuristics | 
This paper develops a metaheuristic for the vehicle-routing and scheduling problem with soft time window constraints. A tabu search solution method is developed, which utilizes a mixed neighbourhood structure and an advanced recovery procedure to generate high-quality solutions. Computational results on test problems from the literature are reported. The metaheuristic achieves solutions that compare favourably with previously reported results.