Endosymbiotic Evolutionary Algorithm for an Integrated Model of the Vehicle Routing and Truck Scheduling Problem with a Cross-Docking System

Abstract

This paper presents a model which integrates inbound and outbound logistics with a cross-docking system. This model integrates the problem of routing inbound vehicles between suppliers and cross-docks and outbound vehicles between cross-docks and retailers, considering logistics costs and the products properties. This model aims to minimize the total cost by optimizing assignment of products to suppliers and retailers and operations of inbound and outbound vehicles. We developed an endosymbiotic evolutionary algorithm, which yields good performance in concurrent searches for the solutions of multiple subproblems and validate the performance using several numerical examples.