Swarm intelligence-based hyper-heuristic for the vehicle routing problem with prioritized customers

Abbas Tarhini (), Kassem Danach () and Antoine Harfouche ()
Additional contact information
Abbas Tarhini: Lebanese American University
Kassem Danach: Islamic University of Lebanon
Antoine Harfouche: Université Paris Nanterre

Annals of Operations Research, 2022, vol. 308, issue 1, No 20, 549-570

Abstract: Abstract The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a combinatorial optimization management problem that seeks the optimal set of routes traversed by a vehicle to deliver products to customers. A recognized problem in this domain is to serve ‘prioritized’ customers in the shortest possible time where customers with known demands are supplied by one or several depots. This problem is known as the Vehicle Routing with Prioritized Customers (VRPC). The purpose of this work is to present and compare two artificial intelligence-based novel methods that minimize the traveling distance of vehicles when moving cargo to prioritized customers. Various studies have been conducted regarding this topic; nevertheless, up to now, few studies used the Cuckoo Search-based hyper-heuristic. This paper modifies a classical mathematical model that represents the VRPC, implements and tests an evolutionary Cuckoo Search-based hyper-heuristic, and then compares the results with those of our proposed modified version of the Clarke Wright (CW) algorithm. In this modified version, the CW algorithm serves all customers per their preassigned priorities while covering the needed working hours. The results indicate that the solution selected by the Cuckoo Search-based hyper-heuristic outperformed the modified Clarke Wright algorithm while taking into consideration the customers’ priority and demands and the vehicle capacity.

Keywords: Warm intelligence; Hyper-heuristic; Combinatorial problem; Vehicle routing problem; Clarke Wright algorithm; Cuckoo search algorithm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10479-020-03625-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:annopr:v:308:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s10479-020-03625-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10479

DOI: 10.1007/s10479-020-03625-5

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Operations Research is currently edited by Endre Boros

More articles in Annals of Operations Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().