A Genetic Algorithm Based Approach to the Profitable Tour Problem with Pick-up and Delivery

As express courier market expands rapidly, companies are exposed to fierce competition. To cope with struggle for their survival, they are continuously making efforts to improve their service system. Even if most of service centers are directly linked to a consolidation terminal in courier service network, some of them with regional disadvantages are operated in milk run type from/to the consolidation terminal, which is a traditional PDP (Pick-up and Delivery Problem). This study suggests an approach to solve the PDP with the objective of maximizing the incremental profit, which belongs to PTP (Profitable Tour Problem) class. After the PTP is converted to TSP (Traveling Salesman Problem) with the same objective, a heuristic algorithm based on GA (Genetic Algorithm) is developed and examined through an example problem in practice of a courier service company in Korea