How can simulated annealing be related to the vehicle routing problem? I have been searching through internet how could simulated annealing to solve the vehicle routing problem, but didn't find anything that made it clear to me. Most of what I found are research papers intended to solve some specific variation of the routing problem.

So I would appreciate if someone can make some kind of explanation of possible ways two things can be related and give some links that to so.
Simulated annealing is an optimization paradigm, in which (very roughly speaking) you start with some solution, and then try to make local changes that improve it, sometimes making a local change even if it doesn't improve.

Vehicle routing is an optimization problem. It is likely that the simulated annealing paradigm can be applied to it, probably in many different ways (corresponding to different notions of local change).