An efficient hybrid genetic algorithm for the traveling salesman problem with release dates

Gabriel Soares, Teobaldo Bulhões and Bruno Bruck

European Journal of Operational Research, 2024, vol. 318, issue 1, 31-42

Abstract: This paper deals with a generalization of the classic traveling salesman problem where each customer is associated with a release date, defined as the time at which the desired product becomes available at the depot. In this problem, a single uncapacitated vehicle is allowed to perform multiple trips in order to satisfy all demands. However, the vehicle cannot start a route unless all the products associated with the demands in the route are released. As a consequence, there might be a waiting time before starting the next route. The objective of the problem is to minimize the completion time of the service, defined as the time at which the vehicle returns to the depot after satisfying all demands. We propose a hybrid genetic algorithm that incorporates more advanced mechanisms to evaluate individuals and to ensure population diversity. We also introduce a novel dynamic programming splitting algorithm that converts a sequence of visits to customers, the so-called giant-tour, into the best set of routes that respects the sequence. Computational experiments performed on 522 benchmark instances show that our approach is able to find all 154 known optimal solutions from the literature. In addition, we were able to improve the best-known upper bounds for 364 instances in significantly shorter computational times when compared to the state-of-the-art.

Keywords: Traveling salesman; Vehicle routing; Release dates; Genetic algorithms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221724003473
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ejores:v:318:y:2024:i:1:p:31-42

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2024.05.010

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().