Abstract
This paper discusses the vehicle routing problem with time windows and stochastic demands. This problem can be described as the problem of designing least cost routes from one depot to a set of customers. We must design the routes such that each customer is visited only once by exactly one vehicle within a given time interval; all routes start and end at the depot. The customers' demands are characterized by a known probability distribution and a customer's actual demand is only revealed when the vehicle reaches the customer location. When the total demands of customers on a route exceed the capacity of the vehicle, extra path to depot for replenishment must occur. We formulate this problem as set covering problem and we solve this problem by column generation method.
