A Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem Approach to the Directed Clustered Rural Postman Problem

In this paper, we examine the directed Clustered Rural Postman Problem (CRPP). The CRPP is a restricted version of the Rural Postman Problem in which each connected component of arcs to be serviced has to be completely serviced before servicing another component. We present an enumerative solution approach for the CRPP based on transforming the CRPP into a version of a Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem. This work also represents a simple yet elegant unifying view for some classes of arc and node routing problems.