Abstract

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.This investigation presents a new mathematical model to solve the vehicle routing problem with backhauls and time windows (VRPBTW). In this problem, customers are divided into two subsets, for delivery and collection. Each vehicle leaves the warehouse to deliver merchandise to linehauls customers. Subsequently, it makes a collection of merchandise to backhauls customers and returns to the departure warehouse. In this proposal, the objective is to minimize the total distance, satisfying all restrictions. In addition, the number of vehicles to make the route is minimized. The model has been evaluated based on artificial data adapted from the literature, which includes demand for 10, 15, 20 and 30 nodes. The computational results contribute to validate the approach and scale the problem for future work.