Dynamic vehicle routing using genetic algorithms

Abstract

Many difficult combinatorial optimization problems have been modeled as static problems. However, in practice, many problems are dynamic and changing, while some decisions have to be made before all the design data are known. For example, in the Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem (DVRP), new customer orders appear over time, and new routes must be reconfigured while executing the current solution. Montemanni et al. [1] considered a DVRP as an extension to the standard vehicle routing problem (VRP) by decomposing a DVRP as a sequence of static VRPs, and then solving them with an ant colony system (ACS) algorithm. This paper presents a genetic algorithm (GA) methodology for providing solutions for the DVRP model employed in [1]. The effectiveness of the proposed GA is evaluated using a set of benchmarks found in the literature. Compared with a tabu search approach implemented herein and the aforementioned ACS, the proposed GA methodology performs better in minimizing travel costs.