A Comparison of Genetic Sequencing Operators

This work compares six sequencing operators that have been developed for use with genetic algorithms. An improved version of the edge recombination operator is presented, the concepts of adjacency, order, and position are reviewed in the context of these operators , and results are compared for a 30 city \Blind" Traveling Salesman Problem and a real world warehouse/shipping scheduling application. Results indicate that the eeective-ness of diierent operators is dependent on the problem domain; operators which work well in problems where adjacency is important (e.g., the Traveling Salesman) may not be eeective for other types of sequencing problems. Operators which perform poorly on the Blind Trav-eling Salesman Problem work extremely well for the warehouse scheduling task.