Novel Encoding and Routing Balance Insertion Based Particle Swarm Optimization with Application to Optimal CVRP Depot Location Determination

A depot location has a significant effect on the transportation cost in vehicle routing problems. This study proposes a hierarchical particle swarm optimization (PSO) including inner and outer layers to obtain the best location to establish a depot and the corresponding optimal vehicle routes using...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Mathematical problems in engineering 2015-01, Vol.2015 (2015), p.1-11
Main Authors: Chen, Ruey-Maw, Shen, Yin-Mou
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Balancing
Coding
Costs
Customers
Encoding
Engineering
Genetic algorithms
Insertion
Mathematical models
Operating costs
Optimization
Particle swarm optimization
Routing
Searching
Site selection
Studies
Swarm intelligence
Traveling salesman problem
Vehicle routing
Vehicles
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Summary:A depot location has a significant effect on the transportation cost in vehicle routing problems. This study proposes a hierarchical particle swarm optimization (PSO) including inner and outer layers to obtain the best location to establish a depot and the corresponding optimal vehicle routes using the determined depot location. The inner layer PSO is applied to obtain optimal vehicle routes while the outer layer PSO is to acquire the depot location. A novel particle encoding is suggested for the inner layer PSO, the novel PSO encoding facilitates solving the customer assignment and the visiting order determination simultaneously to greatly lower processing efforts and hence reduce the computation complexity. Meanwhile, a routing balance insertion (RBI) local search is designed to improve the solution quality. The RBI local search moves the nearest customer from the longest route to the shortest route to reduce the travel distance. Vehicle routing problems from an operation research library were tested and an average of 16% total routing distance improvement between having and not having planned the optimal depot locations is obtained. A real world case for finding the new plant location was also conducted and significantly reduced the cost by about 29%.
ISSN:1024-123X
1563-5147
DOI:10.1155/2015/743507