Improvement of a genetic algorithm approach for the solution of vehicle routing problem with time windows

Abstract

In this study, Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW) with known customer demands, a single depot and identical vehicles, is considered. Minimizing the total distance and the total waiting time of the vehicles are determined as objective functions for VRPTW which is capable to serve the customers in a prespecified time interval. A hybridized version of genetic algorithm which is a metaheuristic solution technique with constructive heuristic methods is proposed to produce effective solutions for VRPTW. By using sweep algorithm in initial population generation phase of genetic algorithm, it is planned to begin the search with high quality solution sets and in this way, get more feasible solutions faster. A benchmark problem in the literature is solved and obtained results are compared with the results of genetic algorithm with the nearest neighbor algorithm based algorithm. It is observed that the proposed genetic algorithm beginning with sweep based initial population generation algorithm reaches more effective solutions.