An Ant Colony Optimization and Hybrid Metaheuristics Algorithm to Solve the Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem

Abstract

Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem (SDVRP) is a relaxation of the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) that allows the same customer to be served by more than one vehicle. Existing literature has applied Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) to other variants of VRP but no known research effort has applied ACO or a combination of ACO and GA to solve the Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem (SDVRP). Hence, two algorithms using ACO and hybrid metaheuristics algorithm comprising a combination of ACO, Genetic Algorithm (GA) and heuristics is proposed and tested on existing benchmark SDVRP problems. The results indicate that the two proposed algorithms are competitive in both solution quality and solution time and for some problem instances, the best ever solutions have been found.