A memetic algorithm for the vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands

International audienceThis article introduces a Memetic Algorithm to solve the Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands. Computational results show that the method outperforms two of the three state-of-the-art metaheuristics and is highly competitive in terms of quality and efficiency compared to the best metaheuristic when tested on 40 instances in the literature. Moreover the method can be easily extended to solve other stochastic problems taking into account both problems with recourse as well as probabilistic constraints