Flower Pollination Algorithm for Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW)

Abstract

Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW) is a vehicle route deciding problem that is used in order to serve customer who involved more than one vehicle with a limited time, so as a minimum distance route is obtained without disobeying vehicle capacity cargo restriction and time range. Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) is an algorithm which inspires from nature and that is flower pollination process toward a plant. Within an FPA, there are two main steps to use, they are global flower pollination and local flower pollination. Those two steps are determined by using switch probability parameter. This program is made in Java language program to apply FPA in solving VRPTW which is implemented in three example cases, they are small-scale datum with 25 customers, medium-scale datum with 50 customers, and big-scale datum with 100 customers. According to the results, it can be concluded that the larger number of flowers and iterations can affect the number of total minimum travel distance become smaller. Furthermore, a better total minimum travel distances also will be obtained if the value of switch probability parameter is larger.