A 3-D Genetic Algorithm for Finding the Number of Vehicles in VRPTW

The problem to be studied here is the minimization of the total travel distance and the number of vehicles used for delivering goods to customers. Vehicle routes must also satisfy a variety of constraints such as fixed vehicle capacity, allowed operating time. Genetic algorithm to solve the VRPTW with heterogeneous fleet is presented. The chromosome of the proposed GA in this study has the 3-dimension. We propose GA that has the cubic-chromosome for VRPTW with heterogeneous fleet. The newly suggested ‘Cubic-GA (or 3-D GA)’ in this paper means the 2-D GA with GLS(Genetic Local Search) algorithms and is quite flexible. To evaluate the performance of the algorithm, we apply it to the Solomon's VRPTW instances. It produces a set of good routes and the reasonable number of vehicles.