Research On Vehicle Routing Problem Based On Improved Hybrid Ant Colony Algorithm

With the rapid development of economy in china, logistics industry has been very important to the national economy. Vehicle Routing Optimization was a crucial part of logistics system, reasonable planning of vehicle routing can reduce operation cost and raise business economic benefits.Ant Colony Algorithm(ACA) which was put forward by M.Dorigo was a new intelligent optimization algorithm. Since it was proposed, it has attracted widespread attention, some improvement measures were put forward after the defects of ACA were discovered, although the performance was improved, the problems such as slow convergence and easiness of falling into local optimum were more or less still existed.The theme of this paper was that a hybrid ACA with short computational time and good result was proposed to solve Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP), the mainly contents were as follows:(1)By studying on VRP and ACA, VRP’s background and some solutions to VRP were introduced briefly, the mathematical model of CVRP was built in the standpoint of the third-party logistics distribution center.(2)In the process of improving ACA, the idea of Saving Algorithm was adopted in the construction of transition formula, thus improved the efficiency of searching. Then through the analysis of MMAS and the test of experiments, a new strategy of updating pheromone was proposed,which can expand the scope of updating and reduce the probability of falling into local optimum.(3)In order to improve the quality of solution,2-opt was adopted in the optimization of branch. The procedure of Genetic Algorithm was inserted in the process of ACA to solve the problem of slow convergence.(4)The process of the whole algorithm was listed at last, the algorithm was tested on the solomon’s instances and the effectiveness of this algorithm was demonstrated through simulation results.The hybrid algorithm is an effective way for CVRP, it can scientifically improve the efficiency of Logistics Distribution and it will have a great significance not only in the theoretical research but also in the applied science for the development of E-commerce and Logistics Distribution.