A grouping genetic algorithm for the pickup and delivery problem with time windows

The Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows (PDPTW) is a generalization of the well studied Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW). Since it models several typical planning situations in operational transportation logistics and public transit, the PDPTW has attracted growing interest in recent years. This paper proposes a Grouping Genetic Algorithm (GGA) for solving the PDPTW which features a group-oriented genetic encoding in which each gene represents a group of requests instead of a single request. The GGA is subject to a comparative test on the basis of two publicly available benchmark problem sets that comprise 9 and 56 PDPTW instances, respectively. The results show that the proposed GGA is competitive.