An artificial bee colony algorithm for the capacitated vehicle routing problem

This paper introduces an artificial bee colony heuristic for solving the capacitated vehicle routing problem. The artificial bee colony heuristic is a swarm-based heuristic, which mimics the foraging behavior of a honey bee swarm. An enhanced version of the artificial bee colony heuristic is also proposed to improve the solution quality of the original version. The performance of the enhanced heuristic is evaluated on two sets of standard benchmark instances, and compared with the original artificial bee colony heuristic. The computational results show that the enhanced heuristic outperforms the original one, and can produce good solutions when compared with the existing heuristics. These results seem to indicate that the enhanced heuristic is an alternative to solve the capacitated vehicle routing problem. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.postprin

Quick Combinatorial Artificial Bee Colony -qCABC- Optimization Algorithm for TSP

Combinatorial Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm (CABC) is a new version of Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) to solve combinatorial type optimization problems and quick Artificial Bee Colony (qABC) algorithm is an improved version of ABC in which the onlooker bees behavior is modeled in more detailed way. Studies showed that qABC algorithm improves the convergence performance of standard ABC on numerical optimization. In this paper, to see the performance of this new modeling way of onlookers' behavior on combinatorial optimization, we apply the qABC idea to CABC and name this new algorithm as quick CABC (qCABC). qCABC is tested on Traveling Salesman Problem and simulation results show that qCABC algorithm improves the convergence and final performance of CABC

Study on the Impact of the NS in the Performance of Meta-Heuristics in the TSP

Meta-heuristics have been applied for a long time to the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) but information is still lacking in the determination of the parameters with the best performance. This paper examines the impact of the Simulated Annealing (SA) and Discrete Artificial Bee Colony (DABC) parameters in the TSP. One special consideration of this paper is how the Neighborhood Structure (NS) interact with the other parameters and impacts the performance of the meta-heuristics. NS performance has been the topic of much research, with NS proposed for the best-known problems, which seem to imply that the NS influences the performance of meta-heuristics, more that other parameters. Moreover, a comparative analysis of distinct meta-heuristics is carried out to demonstrate a non-proportional increase in the performance of the NS.This work is supported by FEDER Funds through the "Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade - COMPETE" program and by National Funds through FCT "FundaqAo para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia" under the project: FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-PEst-OE/EEl/U10760/2011, PEst-OE/EEI/UI0760/2014, and PEst2015-2020.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Best-worst northern goshawk optimizer: a new stochastic optimization method

This study introduces a new metaheuristic method: the best-worst northern goshawk optimizer (BW-NGO). This algorithm is an enhanced version of the northern goshawk optimizer (NGO). Every BW-NGO iteration consists of four phases. First, each agent advances toward the best agent and away from the worst agent. Second, each agent moves relatively to the agent selected at random. Third, each agent conducts a local search. Fourth, each agent traces the space at random. The first three phases are mandatory, while the fourth phase is optional. Simulation is performed to assess the performance of BW-NGO. In this simulation, BW-NGO is confronted with four algorithms: particle swarm optimization (PSO), pelican optimization algorithm (POA), golden search optimizer (GSO), and northern goshawk optimizer (NGO). The result exhibits that BW-NGO discovers an acceptable solution for the 23 benchmark functions. BW-NGO is better than PSO, POA, GSO, and NGO in consecutively optimizing 22, 20, 15, and 11 functions. BW-NGO can discover the global optimal solution for three functions

An efficient discrete artificial bee colony algorithm for the blocking flow shop problem with total flowtime minimization

This paper presents a high performing Discrete Artificial Bee Colony algorithm for the blocking flow shop problem with flow time criterion. To develop the proposed algorithm, we considered four strategies for the food source phase and two strategies for each of the three remaining phases (employed bees, onlookers and scouts). One of the strategies tested in the food source phase and one implemented in the employed bees phase are new. Both have been proved to be very effective for the problem at hand. The initialization scheme named HPF2(¿, µ) in particular, which is used to construct the initial food sources, is shown in the computational evaluation to be one of the main procedures that allow the DABC_RCT to obtain good solutions for this problem. To find the best configuration of the algorithm, we used design of experiments (DOE). This technique has been used extensively in the literature to calibrate the parameters of the algorithms but not to select its configuration. Comparing it with other algorithms proposed for this problem in the literature demonstrates the effectiveness and superiority of the DABC_RCTPeer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft