Savings by Split Delivery Routing.

This paper examines a relaxed version of the generic vehicle routing problem. In this version, a delivery to a demand point can be split between any number of vehicles. In spite of this relaxation the problem remains computationally hard. The main contribution of this paper is in demonstrating the potential for cost savings through split deliveries. The solution scheme allowing for split deliveries is compared with a solution in which no split deliveries are allowed on a large set of 540 problems. Significant cost savings are realized both in terms of the total distance and the number of vehicles required. The. vehicle routes constructed by our procedure, tend to cover cohesive geographical. zones and retain some properties of optimal solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]