This tutorial introduces readers to several variants of routing problems with profits. In these routing problems each node has a certain profit, and not all nodes need to be visited. Since the orienteering problem (OP) is by far the most frequently studied problem in this category of routing problems, the book mainly focuses on the OP. In turn, other problems are presented as variants of the OP, focusing on the similarities and differences. The goal of the OP is to determine a subset of nodes to visit and in which order, so that the total collected profit is maximized and a given time budget is not exceeded.
The book provides a comprehensive review of variants of the OP, such as the team OP, the team OP with time windows, the profitable tour problem, and the prize-collecting travelling salesperson problem. In addition, it presents mathematical models and techniques for solving these OP variants and discusses their complexity. Several simple examples and benchmark instances, together with their best-known results, are also included. Finally, the book reviews the latest applications of these problems in the fields of logistics, tourism and others.
Prof. dr. ir. Pieter Vansteenwegen is an associate professor at the Centre of Industrial Management, Traffic and Infrastructure at KU Leuven and he is the chair of the KU Leuven Mobility Research Centre. He was previously a visiting professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona in 2012. His research focusses on the development of more robust public transportation services and the development of metaheuristics for solving complex logistic and public transportation planning problems. For this research, he was awarded with one of the 10 best papers of the International Association of Railway Operations Research (IAROR) in 2017, the “Young Railway Operations Research Award 2013” of IAROR, the “BIVEC-GIBET PhD Transportation Research Award 2009” of the Benelux Interuniversity Group of Transportation Economists and the First Prize of the “Management Science in Railroad Applications 2005 Student Research Paper Contest” of RASIG – INFORMS. He published more than 40 papers in international reviewed journals such as "Transportation Science", "European Journal of Operational Research", "Computers & Operations Research", "Transportation Research Part B" and "Omega – International Journal of Management Science". He currently has an H-index of 20 (Web of Science) and supervised 7 finished PhDs.
Prof. Aldy Gunawan is currently an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University. Prior to his current position, he was a senior research scientist at the Fujitsu-SMU Urban Computing and Engineering (UNiCEN) Corporate Lab, SMU. He was also an adjunct lecturer at Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University in 2017.
His research focusses on the development of metaheuristics for solving complex logistic, transportation, and supply chain management problems.
His research vision is to use both theory and experiment to create novel algorithms, mechanisms, and systems that enable to support decision making processes. His research projects have touched on various areas within Operations Research, Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science more broadly including: algorithm and complexity, data analytics, planning and scheduling, recommender systems and optimization.
He published research papers in international reviewed journals such as “European Journal of Operational Research”, Computers & Operations Research”, “Journal of the Operational Research Society” and “Computers & Industrial Engineering”. One of his research works has been awarded as the second best paper of the 17th Asia Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Conference in 2017.
