An ant colony optimization method for the capacitated vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands

The ant colony optimization (ACO) method has been extensively studied recently for solving many combinatorial optimization problems. In this paper, an ant colony optimization method for solving the vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands is presented. The 2-opt local search is employed within the ACO algorithm to improve the qualities of the solutions. Simulation technique is used for the estimate of the expected cost under stochastic demands. Computational results are also reported.

[1]  M. Dorigo,et al.  1 Positive Feedback as a Search Strategy , 1991 .

[2]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  Distributed Optimization by Ant Colonies , 1992 .

[3]  Irene Loiseau,et al.  An Ant Colony Algorithm for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing , 2004, Electron. Notes Discret. Math..

[4]  B. Slack,et al.  The Geography of Transport Systems , 2006 .

[5]  Tito Homem-de-Mello,et al.  Solving the Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands using the Cross-Entropy Method , 2005, Ann. Oper. Res..

[6]  Bi Yu Chen,et al.  A Stochastic Vehicle Routing Problem with Travel Time Uncertainty: Trade-Off Between Cost and Customer Service , 2013 .

[7]  Gang Yu,et al.  A Branch-and-Cut Procedure for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows , 2002, Transp. Sci..

[8]  Baozhen Yao,et al.  Production , Manufacturing and Logistics An improved ant colony optimization for vehicle routing problem , 2008 .

[9]  Gilbert Laporte,et al.  STOCHASTIC VEHICLE ROUTING. , 1996 .

[10]  Kay Chen Tan,et al.  Solving multiobjective vehicle routing problem with stochastic demand via evolutionary computation , 2007, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[11]  Jörg Homberger,et al.  Two Evolutionary Metaheuristics For The Vehicle Routing Problem With Time Windows , 1999 .

[12]  Louis Caccetta,et al.  Branch and cut methods for network optimization , 2001 .

[13]  Michel Gendreau,et al.  A Tabu Search Heuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Soft Time Windows , 1997, Transp. Sci..

[14]  Jean Berger,et al.  A new hybrid genetic algorithm for the capacitated vehicle routing problem , 2003, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[15]  Byung Ro Moon,et al.  A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm For The Vehicle Routing Problem With Time Windows , 2002, GECCO.

[16]  Richard F. Hartl,et al.  An improved Ant System algorithm for theVehicle Routing Problem , 1999, Ann. Oper. Res..

[17]  Jean-Yves Potvin,et al.  Vehicle Routing , 2009, Encyclopedia of Optimization.

[18]  Patrick R. McMullen,et al.  Ant colony optimization techniques for the vehicle routing problem , 2004, Adv. Eng. Informatics.

[19]  M. Balinski,et al.  On an Integer Program for a Delivery Problem , 1964 .

[20]  Éric D. Taillard,et al.  Solving real-life vehicle routing problems efficiently using tabu search , 1993, Ann. Oper. Res..

[21]  Alexander Hämmerle,et al.  Solving a Vehicle Routing Problem with Ant Colony Optimisation and Stochastic Ranking , 2013, EUROCAST.

[22]  G. Clarke,et al.  Scheduling of Vehicles from a Central Depot to a Number of Delivery Points , 1964 .