Vehicle routing problems with time windows using simulated annealing

S. W. Lin*, K. C. Ying, Z. J. Lee, H. S. Chen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

In recent years, supply chain management is paid attention to every large enterprise. Enterprise reduces their transporting and distributing cost through the manner of subcontractors and shared transportation. The customer request for sending time of the goods is getting more strictly; it can be solved in the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). Because the constraints of VRPTW include the length of each route, loading capacity of vehicle and the available time window for each customer, it is more complex than travel salesperson problem and vehicle routing problem (VRP). This research applied the simulated annealing (SA) combined with local search for solving the VRPTW. The developed approach can escape from the local optimal traps, and the use of exchange and insertion local search can find out the (near) optimal solution quickly and efficiently. The Solomon's benchmark instances are used for verifying the developed approach. AU problems have 100 customers, a delivery depot, constraints of loading capacity and time window. The developed approach finds all the best results in the C set, and find out 4 solutions which are equal to the best solutions found so far in R set and RC set at reasonable computational time. The developed approach finds the average number of vehicles and route costs in most classes are better than or equal to those of previous researches. Therefore, the developed approach can be used to solve the VRPTW effectively.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2006 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages645-650
Number of pages6
ISBN (Print)1424401003, 9781424401000
DOIs
StatePublished - 2006
Externally publishedYes
Event2006 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics - Taipei, Taiwan
Duration: 08 10 200611 10 2006

Publication series

NameConference Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics
Volume1
ISSN (Print)1062-922X

Conference

Conference2006 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics
Country/TerritoryTaiwan
CityTaipei
Period08/10/0611/10/06

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