Possible duplicate article: Vehicle routing issue.

Vehicle Routing Problems (VRP*) are actually a large set of problem variants and customizations. From those that are simpler to some that are still a matter of research today.

In general, they involve finding out the routes of a transport fleet to serve customers. This type of problem belongs to combinatorial optimization problems. In the scientific literature, Dantzig and Ramser were the first authors in 1959, when they studied the real application in the distribution of gasoline for fuel stations.

The objective function depends on the typology and characteristics of the problem. The most common thing is to try to: minimize the total operating cost, minimize the total transportation time, minimize the total distance traveled, minimize the waiting time, maximize the profit, maximize customer service, minimize the use of vehicles, balance the use of resources, etc.

The main elements of this set of problems are the following:.

Another fundamental element is the Geographic Information System (GIS).

There are a wide variety of types of problems. The most well-known are listed below: