A genetic algorithm based approach to vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pick-up and deliveries

The vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pickup and deliveries, which considers simultaneous distribution and collection of goods to/from customers, is an extension of the capacitated vehicle routing problem. There are numerous real cases, that fleet of vehicles originated in a depot serves customers with pick-up and deliveries from/to their locations. Increasing importance of reverse logistics activities make it necessary to determine efficient and effective vehicle routes for simultaneous pick-up and delivery activities. The vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pick-up and deliveries is also NP-hard as capacitated vehicle routing problem and this study proposes a genetic algorithm based approach to this problem. Computational example is given for an illustrative in order to illustrate the performance of the proposed approach.