A Parallel Memetic Algorithm for the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows

Solving the pickup and delivery problem with time windows (PDPTW) is a vital research topic due to its NP-hardness and its numerous practical applications. In this paper, we propose an island-model parallel memetic algorithm for minimizing the distance in the PDPTW. In this algorithm, the processes execute the same memetic algorithm and co-operate to guide the optimization efficiently. An extensive experimental study revealed that the MPI implementation of the proposed approach retrieves very high-quality routing schedules. The analysis is coupled with appropriate statistical tests.