Optimal solution of vehicle routing problems with fractional objective function

In this paper, we consider the vehicle routing problem (VRP) with fractional objective function. We investigate how the principal techniques used either in the context of fractional programming or in the context of vehicle routing problems interact. We present new dual and primal bounding procedures that have been incorporated in an exact method. The method proposed allows extending specific variants of the VRP to their counterpart with a fractional objective function. Extensive numerical experiments prove the validity of our approach.