An improved model for vehicle routing problem with time constraint based on genetic algorithm

A vehicle routing problem (VRP) with time constraint is one of the important problems in distribution and transportation. Thus the generic VRP and its practical extensions are discussed in great detail in the literatures. In the VRP, the service of a customer must start and finish within a given time interval. The objective of this problem is to minimize the cost of servicing the set of customers without being tardy or exceeding the capacity or travel time of the vehicles. In this research we concentrated on developing a GA-TSP model by improving the genetic algorithm (GA) operators and the initial population. For the computational purpose, we developed a GUI (graphic user interface)-type computer program according to the proposed method. The computational results show that the proposed method is very effective on a set of standard test problems and it can be potentially useful in solving the VRPs. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.