A Survey of the Integration of the Coverage Concept in Routing Problems

Abstract

Many academics and business professionals have developed vehicle routing models to solve multiple logistical challenges. Due to their significance in resolving several real-world problems, these problems have been given a lot of attention in the study. The most frequent problems in operations research are vehicle routing problems (VRP), traveling salesman problems (TSP), and location routing Problems (LRP). Several constraints and variants were treated and introduced to the routing problems, such as time window, capacity constraints, and a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles. These variants have multiple impacts that can affect, for example, the environment. For this, the researchers treat the problems according to their needs, and in this case, they introduce the green VRP or any other problem according to the situation. Scientists were interested in routing problems because of their capacity to solve the majority of real cases, which aims to minimize routing costs and maximize profit, and this the objective of all the routing problems. Sometimes it's hard or impossible to visit every node due to limitations on some resources, such as time, budget, and energy. This idea allows us to indirectly satisfy the demand of unvisited customers by visiting them.