Ant Colony-based Tabu List Optimization for Minimizing the Number of Vehicles in Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window Constraints

Abstract

The Vehicle Routing Problem consists in finding a routing plan for vehicles of identical capacity to satisfy the demands of a set of customers. Time window constraints mean that customers can only be served within a pre-defined time window. Researchers have intensively studied this problem because of its wide range of applications in logistics. In this paper, we tackle the problem on an economical point of view with a focus on capital expenditure (CAPEX), where the minimization of the number of vehicles is more important than the total traveling distance. This customization finds its applications in scenarios with limited CAPEX or seasonal/temporary operations. In these cases, the CAPEX should be minimized as much as possible to reduce the overall cost of the operation, while satisfying time window constraints. We provide an Ant Colony Optimization-based Tabu List (ACOTL). We test the proposed approach on the well-known Solomon's benchmarks. We compare experiments results to Dynamic Programming on small size instances and later to the best-known results in the literature on large size instances. ACOTL allows to reduce the number of vehicles used sometimes up to three units, compared to the best-known results, especially for instances where customers are geographically in clusters randomly distributed with vehicles of low or medium charges.

Performance Analysis of RACODSR Protocol in Smart Grayhole Attacks on VANets

“…Genetic algorithms, Ant Colony, Memetic algorithms, Tabu search, simulated annealing are considered as a high level algorithmic strategies that are used to solve any kind of NP-hard problems in engineering through optimizations named metaheuristics. the Ant Colony Optimization [7] as one of these successful solution dedicated to solve the combinatorial optimization problems, is based on forging behavior of ant species when each one deposits an amount of volatile chemical pheromone on the traversed path to reflect its preference. This behavior was adopted to many routing protocols [8] due to its adaptation to topological changes and its self maintenance, the RACODSR is one of the multiple routing protocols that are based on this metaheuristic to enhance the security aspect of source routing as explained in the next paragraph.…”

Editorial from the Editor-in-Chief

“…Yakam and M.D. Fendji [1] reports that the Vehicle Routing Problem consists in finding a routing plan for vehicles of identical capacity to satisfy the demands of a set of customers. Time window constraints mean that customers can only be served within a predefined time window.…”