STOCHASTIC VEHICLE ROUTING PROBLEM (SVRP) VARIANTS AND SOLUTION APPROACHES: A REVIEW AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

These days vehicle routing problems (VRP) solving in broader perspectives are gaining extensive attention in research and applications than earlier. Therefore, its variants and solution approaches need to be reviewed to cope up with the research advancements and the real-world needs. This article presents the importance of stochastic vehicle routing problems in today’s manufacturing and service systems, and a critical analysis on the works done thus far. The aim of the article is to draw the gaps and locate the future research directions in SVRP domain. More than 95 related articles published in reputed journals have been reviewed for this purpose. Those articles are classified into three categories: Vehicle routing problems with stochastic demand (VRPSD), vehicle routing problems with stochastic customer (VRPSC), vehicle routing problems with stochastic travel and service time (VRPST). This article attempts to locate all stochastic vehicle routing problem (SVRP) variants and the solution methods used so far (including the exact, heuristics and meta-heuristics algorithms). The variants can be seen associated with single depot or multi depots. The article offers some suggestions for further research on VRPSC and VRPST solutions concerning SVRP with multiple depots.