Parcel pick-up optimization

Vehicle routing problems solve problems of optimizing the transport routes. The principle of solutions of problems of the first type is finding the shortest circuit that begins and ends in the same place and includes places that can be visited in any order, each of them has to be visited exactly once. In the second type of problems there is also considered the size of the requirements and the capacity of the vehicle, which has to return back to the store. Both tasks can be extended to the so-called time windows, which indicate the interval between the earliest possible and latest allowable start of the customer service. This work aims to calculate the optimal route for the drivers of unnamed wholesale company. The objective is to minimize the distance travelled per day in order to reduce fuel costs. The solution is implemented using the models of Travelling Salesman problem, Vehicle Routing problem and their modifications with time windows through systems LINGO, eventually GUROBI, and MPL for Windows. To illustrate the application of heuristic methods the calculation is carried out by savings method.