| Article ID: | iaor20141850 |
| Volume: | 238 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Start Page Number: | 104 |
| End Page Number: | 113 |
| Publication Date: | Oct 2014 |
| Journal: | European Journal of Operational Research |
| Authors: | Vigo D, Molina J, Caballero R, Hernndez-Daz A G, Lpez-Snchez A D |
| Keywords: | makespan, Spain |
The aim of this paper is to solve a real‐world problem proposed by an international company operating in Spain and modeled as a variant of the Open Vehicle Routing Problem in which the makespan, i.e., the maximum time spent on the vehicle by one person, must be minimized. A competitive multi‐start algorithm, able to obtain high quality solutions within reasonable computing time is proposed. The effectiveness of the algorithm is analyzed through computational testing on a set of 19 school‐bus routing benchmark problems from the literature, and on 9 hard real‐world problem instances.