Shipment Scheduler and Simulator System: An Industry-Strength Application of Genetic Algorithms to a Real-World Shipment Scheduling Problem

This paper addresses a practical application of an order-based genetic algorithm (GA [1, 2, 3]) to a realworld shipment scheduling problem for a major ore-mining company. The problem itself is described in detail in section 1, followed by a thorough discussion of the algorithm employed, including chromosome representation, decoding and evaluation, as well as all of the genetic operators used. The practical results obtained after the system’s implementation are displayed in section 3, with final observations and conclusions being discussed at last in section 4.