An improved artificial bee colony algorithm for vehicle routing problem with time windows: A real case in Dalian

Abstract

This study has been motivated from a real western-style food delivery problem in Dalian city, China, which can be described as a vehicle routing problem with time windows. An integer linear model for the problem is developed, and an improved artificial bee colony algorithm, which possesses a new strategy called an adaptive strategy, a crossover operation, and a mutation operation, is proposed to solve the problem. Then, the effectiveness of the proposed improved artificial bee colony is first validated by some benchmark instances. Furthermore, results obtained on a real-case instance for western-style food delivery problem in Dalian city are also discussed. In this case, the results indicate that the improved artificial bee colony algorithm is a feasible method to solve the real vehicle routing problem with time windows such as western-style food delivery.