A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for Multi-Depot and Periodic Vehicle Routing Problems

We propose an algorithmic framework that successfully addresses three vehicle routing problems: the multi-depot VRP, the periodic VRP, and the multi-depot periodic VRP with heterogeneous capacitated vehicles and constrained route duration. The meta-heuristic combines the exploration breadth of population-based evolutionary search, the aggressive-improvement capabilities of neighborhood-based meta-heuristics, and advanced population-diversity management schemes. Extensive computational experiments show that, the method performs impressively, in terms of both solution quality and computational efficiency. It particular, it either identifies the best known solutions, including the optimal ones, or identifies new best solutions for all currently available benchmark instances for the three problem classes.