An evolutionary algorithm for the vehicle routing problem with route balancing

作者：Jozefowiez Nicolas; Semet Frederic; Talbi El Ghazali^*

来源：European Journal of Operational Research, 2009, 195(3): 761-769.

DOI：10.1016/j.ejor.2007.06.065

• Routing
• Multi-objective optimization
• Genetic algorithms
• Parallel algorithms

In this paper, we address a bi-objective vehicle routing problem in which the total length of routes is minimized as well as the balance of routes, i.e. the difference between the maximal route length and the minimal route length. We propose a meta-heuristic method based on an evolutionary algorithm involving classical multi-objective operators. To improve its efficiency, two mechanisms, which favor the diversification of the search, have been added. First, an elitist diversification mechanism is used in cooperation with classical diversification methodologies. Second, a parallel model designed to take into account the elitist diversification is proposed. Our method is tested oil standard benchmarks for the vehicle routing problem. The contribution of the introduced mechanisms is evaluated by different performance metrics. All the experimentations indicate a strict improvement of the generated Pareto set.

• 出版日期2009-6-16