Agent-Based Algorithms for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows

The vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) is one of the most important and widely studied transportation optimization problems. It abstracts the salient features of numer- ous distribution related real-world problems. It is a problem of finding a set of routes starting and ending at a single depot serving a set of geographically scattered customers, each within a specific time-window and with a specific demand of goods to be delivered. The real world applications of the VRPTW can be very complex being part of higher level sj'^stems i.e. complex supply chain management solutions. For a successful deployment it is impor- tant for these systems to be flexible in terms of incorporating the problem specific side-constraints and problem extensions in an elegant way. Also, employing efficient means of addressing the dy- namism inherent to the execution phase of the relevant operations is vital. The multi-agent systems are an emerging architectm-e with respect to modeling multi-actor heterogenous and dynamic environments. The entities within the system are represented by a set of agents endowed with autonomic as well as social behavioral patterns. The behavior of the system then emerges from their actions and interactions. The autonomic nature of such a model makes it very robust in highly..