Fuzzy Clustering for Initialization of Simulated Annealing Algorithm to Solve a Capacitated Vehicle

Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) has been an interesting research area since its introduction. There are various types of VRP models and different solution techniques proposed for this problem. This paper uses several clustering algorithms in initialization of Simulated Annealing to solve VRP. The main contribution of this research is to assess the effect of using some clustering methods in building the initial solution. For this purpose, Hard C-Means (HCM), Fuzzy C-Means (FCM), and Possibilistic C-Means (PCM) are implemented versus random (RANDOM) and heuristically-built (HB) solutions. These algorithms are compared using two well-known standard datasets and results show that using FCM and PCM in initialization of solutions can lead to promising results.

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