HYBRIDIZING ANT COLONY SYSTEMS AND TABU SEARCH FOR A VEHICLE ROUTING PROBLEM WITH TIME WINDOWS

This paper describes a new approach for solving the vehicle routing problem that considers time windows (VRPTW). The proposal presents a hybrid approach that takes into account an ant colony system ACS and the meta-heuristic Tabu Search. Hybridizing meta-heuristics is one of the alternatives used for solving VRPTWs. Authors believe that a hybrid approach, with ACS providing good initial solutions for the Tabu Search heuristic can help to get acceptable final solutions. Tabu Search plays the role of keeping diversity in the population considered while searching a solution. The proposal was implemented and tested, and results obtained are discussed in the final part of this presentation.