Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows and Simultaneous Delivery and Pick-Up Service Based on MCPSO

This paper considers two additional factors of the widely researched vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). The two factors, which are very common characteristics in realworld, are uncertain number of vehicles and simultaneous delivery and pick-up service. Using minimization of the total...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Xiaobing Gan, Yan Wang, Shuhai Li, Ben Niu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Hindawi Limited 2012-01-01
Series:Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/104279
Description
Summary:This paper considers two additional factors of the widely researched vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). The two factors, which are very common characteristics in realworld, are uncertain number of vehicles and simultaneous delivery and pick-up service. Using minimization of the total transport costs as the objective of the extension VRPTW, a mathematic model is constructed. To solve the problem, an efficient multiswarm cooperative particle swarm optimization (MCPSO) algorithm is applied. And a new encoding method is proposed for the extension VRPTW. Finally, comparing with genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, the MCPSO algorithm performs best for solving this problem.
ISSN:1024-123X
1563-5147