In operations research, the pickup-and-delivery problem (PDP) describes a class of problems in which a transport must be carried out from a pickup point to a delivery point. In contrast to the vehicle routing problem, 2 points or nodes must be considered, namely the pickup point and the delivery point.
In practice, there are numerous variants of the PDP, e.g. with time windows for pickup and delivery (Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows, PDPTW).
For parcel and express services, on the other hand, pick-up and delivery refers to the local collection and delivery of consignments. From an operations research perspective, however, these are usually variants of VRP. This can certainly lead to confusion.
