Machine Learning-Based Parameter Tuned Genetic Algorithm for Energy Minimizing Vehicle Routing Problem

Abstract

During the last decade, tremendous focus has been given to sustainable logistics practices to overcome environmental concerns of business practices. Since transportation is a prominent area of logistics, a new area of literature known as Green Transportation and Green Vehicle Routing has emerged. Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) has been a very active area of the literature with contribution from many researchers over the last three decades. With the computational constraints of solving VRP which is NP-hard, metaheuristics have been applied successfully to solve VRPs in the recent past. This is a threefold study. First, it critically reviews the current literature on EMVRP and the use of metaheuristics as a solution approach. Second, the study implements a genetic algorithm (GA) to solve the EMVRP formulation using the benchmark instances listed on the repository of CVRPLib. Finally, the GA developed in Phase 2 was enhanced through machine learning techniques to tune its parameters. The study reveals that, by identifying the underlying characteristics of data, a particular GA can be tuned significantly to outperform any generic GA with competitive computational times. The scrutiny identifies several knowledge gaps where new methodologies can be developed to solve the EMVRPs and develops propositions for future research.