Improved artificial bee colony algorithm for vehicle routing problem with time windows

Baozhen Yao; Qianqian Yan; Mengjie Zhang; Yunong Yang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0181275

Improved artificial bee colony algorithm for vehicle routing problem with time windows

PLoS One. 2017 Sep 29;12(9):e0181275. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0181275. eCollection 2017.

Authors

Baozhen Yao¹, Qianqian Yan¹, Mengjie Zhang¹, Yunong Yang²

Affiliations

¹ Automotive Engineering College, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, P.R., China.
² Transportation Management College, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, P.R., China.

Abstract

This paper investigates a well-known complex combinatorial problem known as the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). Unlike the standard vehicle routing problem, each customer in the VRPTW is served within a given time constraint. This paper solves the VRPTW using an improved artificial bee colony (IABC) algorithm. The performance of this algorithm is improved by a local optimization based on a crossover operation and a scanning strategy. Finally, the effectiveness of the IABC is evaluated on some well-known benchmarks. The results demonstrate the power of IABC algorithm in solving the VRPTW.

MeSH terms

Algorithms*
Animals
Bees*
Behavior, Animal
Cross-Over Studies
Models, Theoretical
Time and Motion Studies

Grants and funding

This research was supported in National Natural Science Foundation of China 51578112 to BY and the fundamental research funds for the central universities (DUT16YQ104) to BY.