A sweep-based heuristic using common area is developed for multi-vehicle VRPs under time various and unsymmetric forward and backward vehicle moving speed. One depot and 2 delivery vehicle are assumed in this research to make the problem solving strategy simple. A common area is held to make adjustment of possible unbalance of between two vehicle delivery completion times. The 4 time zone heuristic is used to solve for efficient delivery route for each vehicle. The current size of common area needs to be studied for better results, but the suggested problem solving procedures can be expanded for any number of vehicles.

An efficient vehicle routing heuristic for different vehicle moving times for forward and backward between two points is studied in this research. Symmetric distance or moving times are assumed to move back and forth between two points in general, but it is not true in reality. Also, various moving speeds along time zones are considered such as the moving time differences between rush hours or not busy daytimes. To solve this type of extremely complicated combinatorial optimization problems, delivery zones are specified and delivery orders are determined for promising results on the first stage. Then delivery orders in each zone are determined to be connected with other zones for a tentative complete delivery route. Improvement steps are followed to get an effective delivery route for unsymmetric-time-varing vehicle moving speed problems. Performance evaluations are done to show the effectiveness of the suggested heuristic using computer programs specially designed and developed using C++.