Solving the vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands via hybrid genetic algorithm-Tabu search

Abstract

This study considers a version of the stochastic vehicle routing problem where customer demands are random variables with known probability distribution. A new scheme based on a hybrid GA and Tabu Search heuristic is proposed for this problem under a priori approach with preventive restocking. The relative performance of the proposed HGATS is compared to each GA and TS alone, on a set of randomly generated problems following some discrete probability distributions. The problem data are inspired by real case of VRPSD in waste collection. Results from the experiment show the advantages of the proposed algorithm that are its robustness and better solution qualities resulted. © 2008 Science Publications.