Improved Simulated Annealing for Optimization of Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (vrptw)

The Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW) is a combinatorial optimization problem that exists in various distribution systems. The problem deals with allocation of vehicles to service several customers, each customer has different available time, and the vehicles must visit the customers in their available time.This paper addresses the VRPTW by using an improved simulated annealing algorithm. Special functions to effectively exploring neighborhood solutions are developed. The functions are required to deal with the large search space of the VRPTW and enhance the power of the simulated annealing to obtain better solutions. The proposed approach is evaluated in comparison with well-known benchmark problems available in the literature. A set of computational experiments prove that the improved simulated annealing could produce promising results in the average of computational time of 82.29 seconds.