An Analysis of the Impact of Service Consistency on the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows

Guillermo Bianchi and Hernán Lespay ()
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Guillermo Bianchi: Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, Universidad Católica del Norte, Av. Angamos 0610, Antofagasta 1270709, Chile
Hernán Lespay: Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, Universidad Católica del Norte, Av. Angamos 0610, Antofagasta 1270709, Chile

Mathematics, 2025, vol. 13, issue 18, 1-22

Abstract: This paper proposes a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model for the consistent vehicle routing problem with time windows (ConVRPTW), motivated by the need to enhance customer satisfaction in the last-mile logistics industry. The problem involves designing a set of consistent routes for a group of customers whose demand fluctuates from one period to another within a specified planning horizon. The objective is to minimize the cost associated with the number of vehicles used and the total travel time while satisfying service consistency constraints. A tabu search (TS) metaheuristic is implemented to solve the proposed model, and its performance is compared with the optimal solutions. Instances of 10 and 20 customers are designed based on the well-known Solomon instances for VRPTW. Finally, the solutions obtained from the ConVRPTW model are compared with those of a traditional VRPTW model using some key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the contribution of service consistency to route design.

Keywords: vehicle routing problem; metaheuristic; service consistency; customer satisfaction; key performance indicators; last-mile logistics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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