A genetic algorithm for the vehicle routing problem with time windows

The objective of the vehicle routing problem (VRP) is to deliver a set of customers with known demands on minimum-cost vehicle routes originating and terminating at the same depot. A vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) requires the delivery be made within a speci¯c time frame given by the customers. Prins (2004) recently proposed a simple and e®ective genetic algorithm (GA) for VRP. In terms of average solution cost, it outperforms most published tabu search results. We implement this hybrid GA to handle VRPTW. Both the implementation and computational results will be discussed.