Genetic algorithm for the pickup and delivery problem with time windows

In this paper,an insertion heuristic based on time difference is introduced.Based on this insertion heuristic,a genetic algorithm for pickup and delivery problem with time windows(PDPTW) is proposed.Comparing with other genetic algorithms,our algorithm holds two characters:1)Cross operation as well as R1- mutation operation and R2- mutation operation are based on time difference insertion heuristic;2)Non-generation search strategy is applied to the algorithm.Our algorithm is subject to a comparative test on the benchmark problem sets that comprise 56 PDPTW instances.The results show that the solution quality is better than the reported algorithm whose objective function is the same as ours.