A hybrid method combining genetic algorithm and Hooke-Jeeves method for 4PLRP

Fourth party logistics (4PL) was widely accepted by many companies nowadays. As one of the most important aspects in 4PL, the fourth party logistics routing problems (4PLRP) is very difficult to solve. Many intelligent methods has been used to solve the 4PLRP. Genetic algorithm (GA) is one fo such intelligent methods. Based on previous research, GA can work efficiently on small-scale 4PLRP. However, GA cannot get high quality solution for large-scale 4PLRP. In this paper, we proposed a hybrid genetic algorithm to solve the 4PLRP problems. The Hooke- Jeeves method, which performs well in local search, is embedded in the proposed method and it can dramatically improves the accuracy and convergence rate of GA. Simulations are carried out to test the performance of the proposed method on a set of 4PLRP instances. Results show that our proposed method is efficient on 4PLRP.