An effective discrete invasive weed optimization algorithm for multi-AGVs dispatching problem in a matrix production workshop

Automatic guided vehicles dispatching problem (AGVDP) has important applications in matrix production workshop. In this paper, we present a mathematical model for the AGVDP. Then, a new violating time decreasing method is designed to reduce the transportation cost. An effective discrete invasive weed optimization algorithm (DIWO) is proposed. In the proposed DIWO algorithm, a nearest-neighbor-based heuristic is used to generate initial population with high quality, a local search is applied to enhance the local search capability. A comprehensive calculation campaign based on 110 benchmark examples from actual factory is carried out in this paper. The comparative evaluations show that the proposed DIWO algorithm has much better performance than other algorithms.