A Comparative Evaluation of Selected Heuristic Solutions of Vehicle Routing Problems in Supply Chain Management

This work involves evaluation of three heuristics which are often used to solve the VRP namely; nearest insertion, nearest neighbour, and tour improvement heuristics using computer execution time, implementation complexity and asymptotic time complexity. The research findings of this work have established that the nearest neighbour heuristic is the most efficient in terms of execution time, program volume and programming effort. The nearest insertion heuristics ranks next while the tour improvement heuristic is the least efficient. Solution to a thirty-seven-node vehicle routing problem implemented using the Nigerian State capitals and Abuja was also obtained.