Introducing the Localized Genetic Algorithm for Small Scale Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problems

Abstract

Order based combinatorial optimization problems usually require decomposition to work effectively. Such a methodology is implemented in Dynamic Programming, Tabu Search and other meta-heuristics in the area of VRP and has proved to be successful. However, it has not been tested in Genetic Algorithms. Here, we develop a new meta-heuristic, called the Localized Genetic Algorithm (LGA). We apply this LGA to small scale capacitated vehicle routing problems, both with and without route constraint. Our results on popular datasets have demonstrated competitive performance.

Keywords:

• Localized genetic algorithm
• vehicle routing problem
• self imposed constraints
• controlled de-optimization