Adaptive permutation-based genetic algorithm for solving VRP with stochastic demands

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to solve the Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands (VRPSD) under restocking policy by using adaptive Genetic Algorithm (GA). The problem of VRPSD is one of the most important and studied combinatorial optimization problems, which finds its application on wide ranges of logistics and transportation area. It is a variant of a Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP). The algorithms for stochastic VRP are considerably more intricate than deterministic VRP and very time consuming. This has led us to explore the used of metaheuristics focusing on the permutation-based GA. The GA is enhanced by automatically adapting the mutation probability to capture dynamic changing in population. The GA becomes a more effective optimizer where the adaptive schemes are depend on population diversity measure. The proposed algorithm is compared with standard GA on a set of randomly generated problems following some discrete probability distributions inspired by real case of VRPSD in solid waste collection in Malaysia. The performances of several types of adaptive mutation probability were also investigated. Experimental results show performance enhancements when adaptive GA is used.