Tackling Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows by means of Ant Colony System

The Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (DVRPTW) is an extension of the well-known Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), which takes into account the dynamic nature of the problem. This aspect requires the vehicle routes to be updated in an ongoing manner as new customer requests arrive in the system and must be incorporated into an evolving schedule during the working day. Besides the vehicle capacity constraint involved in the classical VRP, DVRPTW considers in addition time windows, which are able to better capture real-world situations. Despite this, so far, few studies have focused on tackling this problem of greater practical importance. To this end, this study devises for the resolution of DVRPTW, an ant colony optimization based algorithm, which resorts to a joint solution construction mechanism, able to construct in parallel the vehicle routes. This method is coupled with a local search procedure, aimed to further improve the solutions built by ants, and with an insertion heuristics, which tries to reduce the number of vehicles used to service the available customers. The experiments indicate that the proposed algorithm is competitive and effective, and on DVRPTW instances with a higher dynamicity level, it is able to yield better results compared to existing ant-based approaches.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Planning and Scheduling Transportation Vehicle Fleet in a Congested Traffic Environment

Transportation is a main component of supply chain competitiveness since it plays a major role in the inbound, inter-facility, and outbound logistics. In this context, assigning and scheduling vehicle routing is a crucial management problem. Despite numerous publications dealing with efficient scheduling methods for vehicle routing, very few addressed the inherent stochastic nature of travel times in this problem. In this paper, a vehicle routing problem with time windows and stochastic travel times due to potential traffic congestion is considered. The approach developed introduces mainly the traffic congestion component based on queueing theory. This is an innovative modeling scheme to capture the stochastic behavior of travel times. A case study is used both to illustrate the appropriateness of the approach as well as to show that time-independent solutions are often unrealistic within a congested traffic environment which is often the case on the european road networkstransportation; vehicle fleet; planning; scheduling; congested traffic

THE CHARACTERISTICS STUDY OF SOLVING VARIANTS OF VEHICLE ROUTING PROBLEM AND ITS APPLICATION ON DISTRIBUTION PROBLEM

Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is one of the most challenging problems in combinatorial optimization. Objective of VRP is to find minimum length route starts and ends in a depot. There are some additional constraints such as more than one depot, service time, time window, capacity of vehicle, and many more. These are cause of VRP variants. Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW) is a variant of VRP with some additional constrains, that are number of requests may not exceed the vehicle capacity, as well as travel time and service time may not exceed the time window. Multi Depot Vehicle Routing Problem (MDVRP) has number of depots serving all customers, a number of vehicles distributing goods to customers with a minimum distance of distribution route without exceeding the capacity of the vehicle. Many researches have presented algorithms to solve VRPTW and MDVRP. This article discusses solution characteristics of VRPTW and MDVRP algorithms, and their performance. VRPTW algorithms reviewed are Tabu Search, Clarke and Wright, Nearest Insertion Heuristics, Harmony Search, Simulated Annealing, and Improved Ant Colony System algorithm. Performance of MDVRP algorithms studied are Self-developed Algorithm, Upper Bound, Clarke and Wright, Ant Colony Optimization, and Genetic Algorithm. Each algorithm is studied on its performance, process, advantages, and disadvantages. This article presents example of distribution problem in VRPTW and MDVRP, based on characteristic of the real problem. A computer program created using Delphi is implemented for VRPTW and MDVRP, to solve distribution problem for any number of vehicles and customer locations. Keywords: VRPTW, MDVRP, Distribution proble

Application of Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm in Vehicle Routing Problem With Time Windows

In order to improve the accuracy of the artificial bee colony algorithm (ABC) on vehicle routing problem with time window (VRPTW),This paper makes the following improvements to the ABC :We introduce three kinds of neighborhood search methods,In the leader bee and follower bee search stage,we changing the single search mode into a three-way search method,which improves the optimization depth of the algorithm.Conducting multiple neighborhood searches of new food sources generated by the scouter bee and proceeding to the next iteration has enhanced the survival of new food sources and increased the diversity of populations. The global optimal solution is recorded by setting and updating the bulletin board. Simulation experiments show that the improved discrete ABC algorithm has obvious advantages in solving large-scale VRPTW. Therefore, the improved discrete ABC algorithm has great potential and application value in solving VRPTW

Ant colony optimization and its application to the vehicle routing problem with pickups and deliveries

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a population-based metaheuristic that can be used to find approximate solutions to difficult optimization problems. It was first introduced for solving the Traveling Salesperson Problem. Since then many implementations of ACO have been proposed for a variety of combinatorial optimization. In this chapter, ACO is applied to the Vehicle Routing Problem with Pickup and Delivery (VRPPD). VRPPD determines a set of vehicle routes originating and ending at a single depot and visiting all customers exactly once. The vehicles are not only required to deliver goods but also to pick up some goods from the customers. The objective is to minimize the total distance traversed. The chapter first provides an overview of ACO approach and presents several implementations to various combinatorial optimization problems. Next, VRPPD is described and the related literature is reviewed, Then, an ACO approach for VRPPD is discussed. The approach proposes a new visibility function which attempts to capture the “delivery” and “pickup” nature of the problem. The performance of the approach is tested using well-known benchmark problems from the literature

Research On Improved Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm Based On Spark For Vehicle Routing Problem With Time Windows

作为一个在诸多研究方向都炙手可热的组合优化和整数规划问题，车辆路径问题（VehicleRoutingProblem，VRP）近几十年来在图论、运筹学、应用数学、计算机应用等领域都有着深入而广泛的应用和实践。近十年来，随着我国电子商务的爆发式增长，VRP问题在物流配送、快递运输方面的应用和其带来的经济价值使得它在科学研究领域的重要性不断增强。带时间窗约束的车辆路径问题（VehicleRoutingProblemWithTimeWindows，VRPTW）是VRP问题的一个分支，具有更高实际应用价值，但相关研究比较少。 随着大数据和云计算技术的发展，大数据并行计算框架Spark和Hadoop在工...As a sought-after combinatorial optimization and integer programming problem in many research directions, vehicle routing problem has in-depth and extensive application and practice in graph theory, operations research, applied mathematics, computer application in recent decades. In nearly a decade, with the explosive growth of electronic commerce in our country, the applications of VRP problem in...学位：工学硕士院系专业：信息科学与技术学院_工程硕士(计算机技术)学号：2302014115321

Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window Constrain using KMeans Clustering to Obtain the Closest Customer

In this paper, the problem statement is solving the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) with Time Window constraint using the Ant Colony Algorithm with K-Means Clustering. In this problem, the vehicles must start at a common depot, pickup from various ware houses, deliver to the respective nodes within the time window provided by the customer and returns to depot. The objectives defined are to reduction in usage of number of vehicles, the total logistics cost and to reduce carbon emissions. The mathematical model described in this paper has considered multiple pickup and multiple delivery points. The proposed solution of this paper aims to provide better and more efficient solution while minimizing areas of conflict so as to provide the best output on a large scale in Vehicle Routing Problem, K-Means Clustering, Time Window constraint, Ant Colony Algorithm