A simple heuristic for vehicle routing - A variant of Clarke and Wright's saving method

- This article presents a simple heuristic for vehicle routing and transport planning.
- This method is easy to teach, and easy to grasp for the students, therefore suitable for introducing transport planning.
- This new saving method finds better solutions than many previous presented saving methods.

Efficient collection and distribution of items are important because fewer resources and less energy would be used and this would help the world to be more sustainable. Many goods are always in transit. Efficient collection from storage racks and depots, and efficient distribution to retailers and customers, etc., will decrease transport inventories. The paper presents a variant of the Clarke and Wright's saving method that is suitable for introducing the vehicle routing problem and the importance of efficient vehicle routing. The method uses only the first pair of calculated savings and uses these also when searching for complements or additions to an already decided route. The variant is simple, very fast and finds the best known solution to the Dantzig and Ramser (1959)-problem.