scholarly journals Harmony Search Method with Global Sharing Factor Based on Natural Number Coding for Vehicle Routing Problem

Information ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liqun Liu ◽  
Jiuyuan Huo ◽  
Fei Xue ◽  
Yongqiang Dai

This paper proposes an improved Harmony Search algorithm, and gives the definition of the Global Sharing Factor of the Harmony Search (HS) algorithm. In the definition, the number of creations of the HS algorithm is applied to the sharing factor and calculated. In this algorithm, the natural harmony encoding method is used to encode the initial harmony, and the total path length of all vehicles is taken as the optimization objective function. A new harmony generation strategy is proposed as follows: each tone component in an evolution is calculated separately using the new learning strategy and update strategy. In the calculation process, the tone component is judged by whether it needs to be adjusted according to the adjustment strategy. In this way, the problems of singularity and randomness of the new harmony generation strategy of basic HS are solved to improve the diversity of algorithm solutions. Then, a new Harmony Search method with Global Sharing Factor based on natural number coding and decoding for the Vehicle Routing Problem (GSF-HS-VRP) is proposed. The improved Global Sharing Factor-Harmony Search-Vehicle Routing Problem (GSF-HS-VRP) algorithm is applied to capacity-limited vehicle path optimization problems compared with the HS, Improved Harmony Search (IHS), Global-best Harmony Search (GHS), and Self-adaptive Global Best Harmony Search (SGHS) algorithms. The small-scale data and Solomon examples were adopted as the experimental data. Compared with the other four algorithms, the GSF-HS-VRP algorithm has the shortest running time, more rapid convergence speed, and higher efficiency. In the multi-vehicle test, with the increase of the number of vehicles, the optimized path of the vehicle is more satisfied in relation to the actual needs of customers. The results showed that this method could effectively improve the optimization performance of the capacity-limited vehicle routing problem.

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (06) ◽  
pp. 1550021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esam Taha Yassen ◽  
Masri Ayob ◽  
Mohd Zakree Ahmad Nazri ◽  
Nasser R. Sabar

Harmony search algorithm, which simulates the musical improvisation process in seeking agreeable harmony, is a population based meta-heuristics algorithm for solving optimization problems. Although it has been successfully applied on various optimization problems; it suffers the slow convergence problem, which greatly hinders its applicability for getting good quality solution. Therefore, in this work, we propose a hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm that hybridizes a harmony search with simulated annealing for the purpose of improving the performance of harmony search algorithm. Harmony search algorithm is used to explore the search spaces. Whilst, simulated annealing algorithm is used inside the harmony search algorithm to exploit the search space and further improve the solutions that are generated by harmony search algorithm. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested using the Solomon's Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW) benchmark. Numerical results demonstrate that the hybrid approach is better than the harmony search without simulated annealing and the hybrid also proves itself to be more competent (if not better on some instances) when compared to other approaches in the literature.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shifeng Chen ◽  
Rong Chen ◽  
Jian Gao

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a classical combinatorial optimization problem. It is usually modelled in a static fashion; however, in practice, new requests by customers arrive after the initial workday plan is in progress. In this case, routes must be replanned dynamically. This paper investigates the Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (DVRPTW) in which customers’ requests either can be known at the beginning of working day or occur dynamically over time. We propose a hybrid heuristic algorithm that combines the harmony search (HS) algorithm and the Variable Neighbourhood Descent (VND) algorithm. It uses the HS to provide global exploration capabilities and uses the VND for its local search capability. In order to prevent premature convergence of the solution, we evaluate the population diversity by using entropy. Computational results on the Lackner benchmark problems show that the proposed algorithm is competitive with the best existing algorithms from the literature.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Bochen Wang ◽  
Qiyuan Qian ◽  
Zheyi Tan ◽  
Peng Zhang ◽  
Aizhi Wu ◽  
...  

This study investigates a multidepot heterogeneous vehicle routing problem for a variety of hazardous materials with risk analysis, which is a practical problem in the actual industrial field. The objective of the problem is to design a series of routes that minimize the total cost composed of transportation cost, risk cost, and overtime work cost. Comprehensive consideration of factors such as transportation costs, multiple depots, heterogeneous vehicles, risks, and multiple accident scenarios is involved in our study. The problem is defined as a mixed integer programming model. A bidirectional tuning heuristic algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm are developed to solve the problem of different scales of instances. Computational results are competitive such that our algorithm can obtain effective results in small-scale instances and show great efficiency in large-scale instances with 70 customers, 30 vehicles, and 3 types of hazardous materials.


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 1043-1066 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Munari ◽  
Alfredo Moreno ◽  
Jonathan De La Vega ◽  
Douglas Alem ◽  
Jacek Gondzio ◽  
...  

We address the robust vehicle routing problem with time windows (RVRPTW) under customer demand and travel time uncertainties. As presented thus far in the literature, robust counterparts of standard formulations have challenged general-purpose optimization solvers and specialized branch-and-cut methods. Hence, optimal solutions have been reported for small-scale instances only. Additionally, although the most successful methods for solving many variants of vehicle routing problems are based on the column generation technique, the RVRPTW has never been addressed by this type of method. In this paper, we introduce a novel robust counterpart model based on the well-known budgeted uncertainty set, which has advantageous features in comparison with other formulations and presents better overall performance when solved by commercial solvers. This model results from incorporating dynamic programming recursive equations into a standard deterministic formulation and does not require the classical dualization scheme typically used in robust optimization. In addition, we propose a branch-price-and-cut method based on a set partitioning formulation of the problem, which relies on a robust resource-constrained elementary shortest path problem to generate routes that are robust regarding both vehicle capacity and customer time windows. Computational experiments using Solomon’s instances show that the proposed approach is effective and able to obtain robust solutions within a reasonable running time. The results of an extensive Monte Carlo simulation indicate the relevance of obtaining robust routes for a more reliable decision-making process in real-life settings.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lahcene Guezouli ◽  
Mohamed Bensakhria ◽  
Samir Abdelhamid

In this article, the authors propose a decision support system which aims to optimize the classical Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem by considering the existence of multiple available depots and a time window which must not be violated, that they call the Multi-Depot Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window (MDVRPTW), and with respecting a set of criteria including: schedules requests from clients, the capacity of vehicles. The authors solve this problem by proposing a recently published technique based on soccer concepts, called Golden Ball (GB), with different solution representation from the original one, this technique was designed to solve combinatorial optimization problems, and by embedding a clustering algorithm. Computational results have shown that the approach produces acceptable quality solutions compared to the best previous results in similar problem in terms of generated solutions and processing time. Experimental results prove that the proposed Golden Ball algorithm is efficient and effective to solve the MDVRPTW problem.


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 18-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meryem Berghida ◽  
Abdelmadjid Boukra

This paper presents a new Quantum Inspired Harmony Search algorithm with Variable Population Size QIHSVPS for a complex variant of vehicle routing problem (VRP), called HVRPMBTW (Vehicle Routing Problem with Heterogeneous fleet, Mixed Backhauls and Time Windows). This variant is characterized by a limited number of vehicles with various capacities and costs. The vehicles serve two types of customers: linehauls customers and backhauls customers. Each customer must be visited in a specific interval of time. The authors propose to use quantum principles to accelerate evolution process and variable population size to decrease the number of solution's evaluation, when the improvement is insignificant. This new approach was tested on benchmarks and produces satisfactory results compared to other approaches.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert Laporte

The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) and the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) are two of the most popular problems in the field of combinatorial optimization. Due to the study of these two problems, there has been a significant growth in families of exact and heuristic algorithms being used today. The purpose of this paper is to show how their study has fostered developments of the most popular algorithms now applied to the solution of combinatorial optimization problems. These include exact algorithms, classical heuristics and metaheuristics.


2011 ◽  
Vol 217-218 ◽  
pp. 1044-1049 ◽  
Author(s):  
Si Yuan Wen ◽  
Ying Li

The objective of fastest completed vehicle routing problem (FCVRP) is to minimum complete time, this kind VRP problem was applied in emergency management and quick response supply chain management. Multiple ant colony algorithm for this problem is studied in this paper. The conception of FCVRP is given and then vehicle allocation method and objective function computing method are given to convert FCVRP problem to optimal alignment problem. At same time one local search method of this problem is introduced. Then learning multiple ant colony algorithm is bring forward to solve FCVRP and one numerical example is solved by this algorithm at last.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Osaba ◽  
F. Diaz ◽  
R. Carballedo ◽  
E. Onieva ◽  
A. Perallos

Nowadays, the development of new metaheuristics for solving optimization problems is a topic of interest in the scientific community. In the literature, a large number of techniques of this kind can be found. Anyway, there are many recently proposed techniques, such as the artificial bee colony and imperialist competitive algorithm. This paper is focused on one recently published technique, the one called Golden Ball (GB). The GB is a multiple-population metaheuristic based on soccer concepts. Although it was designed to solve combinatorial optimization problems, until now, it has only been tested with two simple routing problems: the traveling salesman problem and the capacitated vehicle routing problem. In this paper, the GB is applied to four different combinatorial optimization problems. Two of them are routing problems, which are more complex than the previously used ones: the asymmetric traveling salesman problem and the vehicle routing problem with backhauls. Additionally, one constraint satisfaction problem (the n-queen problem) and one combinatorial design problem (the one-dimensional bin packing problem) have also been used. The outcomes obtained by GB are compared with the ones got by two different genetic algorithms and two distributed genetic algorithms. Additionally, two statistical tests are conducted to compare these results.


2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 781-789
Author(s):  
Nour Abdullatif ◽  
Sally Kassem

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is among the most studied optimization problems in the field of supply chain management. Typically, VRP requires dispatching a fleet of vehicles from a central depot to deliver demand to pre-determined spatially dispersed customers, with the objective of minimizing the total routing cost, and the constraint of not exceeding vehicles’ capacities. Agent Based Modelling (ABM) assists industries in the use of technology to support their decision-making process. This paper proposes a model of an Agent Based Vehicle Routing Problem System. The system under study is modelled using the Unified Modelling Language 2.0 (UML 2.0). The aim of the proposed model is to exploit the clear visualization provided by UML and the detailed view of the Agent-based modelling, in order to propose a new modeling perspective for the classic VRP. The paper covers the System initiation phase, in addition to, the functional, behavioral, and structural models.


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