A Bio-Inspired Algorithm for the Fleet Size and Mix Vehicle Routing Problem

The fleet size and mix vehicle routing problem (FSMVRP) is a class of combinatorial optimization problem with wide-ranging applications in practice. The purpose of this problem is to manage the routes as well as the type of vehicles. In this paper, we apply a bio-inspired algorithm based on the concept of membrane computing (named BIBMA) to solve FSMVRP. In BIBMA, a cell-like framework and rules such as updating rules, communication rules, recording rules and selecting rules, are combined to improve the algorithm’s global search capacities. We tested our method on several benchmark functions of FSMVRP, including 12 instances with fixed cost and 8 instances without fixed cost. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is valid to solve FSMVRP for high quality results.