VRP variant

Michael Faschinger · science forum beginner Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 1

Hi,
I am looking for the name of a variant of the vehicle routing problem:
I am basically struggling with the capacitated vrp, but there is one
difference to the 'standard' CVRP: I am not 'delivering' goods, but
picking up different kinds of goods. For example, I know that I have to
pick up 3 apples and 2 bananas. City A has 2 bananas and 2 apples, city
B has 1 banana and 3 apples and city C has 3 bananas and 1 apple. I
cannot make a general statement on what cities I have to visit on my
optimal tour.
So my problem states as follows:
A fleet of vehicles picks up goods of different types from customers.
Each vehicle has a certain capacity. Further on there exists a depot and
a distance (length, cost, time) matrix between the customers. The depot
has a given demand of goods. I look for optimal vehicle routes (minimum
distance or number of vehicles).

As an exact solution seems to be infeasible already for rather small
solutions to me (it extends the CVRP as one also has to find the subset
of cities that are part of the optimal solution), I decided to implement
a metaheuristic that works pretty well.
Still, I'd like to know if there are any popular approaches to solve
this problem, but as I don't know the name of this problem I don't know
what to search for. Can anyone help me find the name for this problem
(if it has one)?
Thanks in advance, Michael

Google