Grid Platform Applied to the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows for the Distribution of Products

Abstract

Around the world there have recently been new and more powerful computing platforms created that can be used to work with computer science problems. Some of these problems that are dealt with are real problems of the industry; most are classified by complexity theory as hard problems. One such problem is the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). The computational Grid is a platform which has recently ventured into the treatment of hard problems to find the best solution for these. This chapter presents a genetic algorithm for the vehicle routing problem with time windows. The algorithm iteratively applies a mutation operator, first of the intelligent type and second of the restricting type. The algorithm takes advantage of Grid computing to increase the exploration and exploitation of the solution space of the problem. The Grid performance is analyzed for a genetic algorithm and a measurement of the latencies that affect the algorithm is studied. The convenience of applying this new computing platform to the execution of algorithms specially designed for Grid computing is presented.

Unsupervised Clustering Method for the Capacited Vehicle Routing Problem

“…Given the complexity of this type of problem, highperformance supercomputing infrastructure, such as Grid computing, is used in the search and improvement of solutions [29].…”

Information Technology for Communities: Development of a Web-based 3-D Visualization and Cluster Computing System for Disaster Management

“…Luis et al reviewed numerous articles in disaster relief routing and suggested to utilize high performance computing approach for disaster relief routing [12]. Recently, Lecron et al and Cruz-Chávez et al exploited grid computing method in solving Vehicle Routing Problem [13,14].…”