Systematic Review of the Latest Scientific Publications on the Vehicle Routing Problem

The vehicle routing problem (VRP) and its variants are a class of network problems that have attracted the attention of many researchers in recent years, owing to their pragmatic approach to solving issues in logistics management. Most surveys/reviews of the extant literature often focus on specific variants or aspects of the VRP. However, a few reviews of the overall VRP literature are available. The focus of these papers is to identify which VRP literature characteristics are the most popular in recent studies. To this end, we analyze 229 articles published between 2015 and 2017. We provide a systematic literature review evaluating the Scenario Characteristics and Problem Physical Characteristics that are most frequently addressed by VRP researchers, the Type of Study and Data Characteristics that they address, the most cited works that constitute the theoretical pillars of the field, and details of three specific problem variants that have been studied extensively in recent years and their opportunities for future research.