Specific Multi-trip Operators for Vehicle Routing Problems

In vehicle routing problems with multiple trips (VRPM), each vehicle is allowed to perform more than one trip during its working period. Classical solution techniques for this problem use existing VRP heuristics to create trips, together with bin packing methods aimed at assigning these trips to the available vehicles. In this work, specific local search operators for the VRPM are proposed. Heuristics using these operators are compared with classical solution techniques mentioned above