Vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands and simultaneous delivery and pickup based on the cross-entropy method

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of Vehicle Routing Problem with stochastic demands and simultaneous delivery and pickup. An effective algorithm based on cross-entropy is designed to solve the model. The cross-entropy method is a new generic approach to combinatorial and multi-extremal optimization and rare event simulation. Numerical experiments have been conducted and the results indicate that the method can effectively solve this problem. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.