IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijores/v3y2008i5p497-514.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Experimenting crossover operators to solve the vehicle routing problem with time windows by Genetic Algorithms

Author

Listed:
  • Massimiliano Caramia
  • Riccardo Onori

Abstract

In the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW), a set of vehicles with limited capacity are to be routed from a central depot to a set of geographically distributed customers with known demands and predefined time windows. To solve the problem, an optimum assignment of vehicles to each customer is needed to achieve the minimal total distance travelled without violating the vehicle capacity and time window constraints. VRPTW has been the subject of intensive research, mainly focused on the design of effective metaheuristics to cope with the high complexity of the problem. Among these, Genetic Algorithms (GAs) have received a special attention, especially for their capabilities in coding problem solutions and achieving good performance on real-world applications. The goal of this paper is to revise the state of the art and the performance of GAs applied to VRPTW; in particular, we experimented with different crossover techniques and provide a new crossover operator, called DAX, to find high quality solutions. Computational results on the performance of the operators are given on a real-world application.

Suggested Citation

  • Massimiliano Caramia & Riccardo Onori, 2008. "Experimenting crossover operators to solve the vehicle routing problem with time windows by Genetic Algorithms," International Journal of Operational Research, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 3(5), pages 497-514.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijores:v:3:y:2008:i:5:p:497-514
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=19165
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijores:v:3:y:2008:i:5:p:497-514. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=170 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.