A heuristic modification of genetic algorithm used for solving the single depot capacited vehicle routing problem

The paper proposes a genetic algorithm (GA) in conjunction with handy heuristic techniques to solve the single depot capacited vehicle routing problem (CVRP). The genetic algorithm is developed on the basis of experiences in solving the travelling salesman problem (TSP). Few heuristic improvements are added in order to prevent converging to local optima and to reduce the search space domain. To deal effectively with constraints of the problem and prune the search space of the GA in advance, the constraints are embedded in decimal coding of the problem. The proposed GA approach has been tested on several CVRP with different number of consumer nodes and different control parameters. The results of 144 node problem used for sensitivity analysis, reveal that the features of easy implementation, fast convergence, and near optimal solution in solving the CVRP can be achieved by the proposed GA approach.