A Solution of Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window via Ant Colony System Metaheuristic

This paper addresses an architecture for solving the dynamic vehicle routing problem with time windows(DVRPTW) and capacitated fleet using the ant colony system(ACS) metaheuristic. All customers are known in advance,but their demands take place at any instant within a time horizon. The architecture has been developed to run in a centralized fashion, having two main elements, i.e, the events manager element and the ACS element. The events manager element is the central structure of the solution architecture. The static problem element receives the orders and selects them according to their time windows, sending them to the ACS element. It defines, at each static problem,the number of routes and the sequence of customers to be served. All routes arose from the ACS Element are dispatched to the events manager, that will be responsible for assigning them to the vehicles. All the architecture provided results are feasible and all the time windows are always respected.