A Hybrid Optimization Model for Vehicle Routing Problem, a Case Study at Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Shama District

The aim of this study was to develop a hybrid optimization model for solving the routing problem identified at Zoomlion Ghana Limited in Shama district in the Western Region of Ghana. Two main optimization models were considered: Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA). A hybrid algorithm was developed from the two by merging crossover and mutation operators of GA with PSO. A sample of 20 breakpoints was run through 10,000 iterations for all the models and the results of the proposed hybrid model was compared with PSO and GA separately. The optimal results of PSO, GA and the proposed models are 1160.6km, 1190.3km and 1132.3km respectively. The proposed model’s results were also compared with other hybrid models to test the robustness of the new model. This result was achieved because the new model eliminates the low convergence rate in PSO and also prevents it from easily falling into local optimum in high-dimensional space and the inclusion of crossover and mutation operators of GA improves the diversity of the iterations. After the iterations, PSO reduced a field distance of 1700 km to 1160.6 km within 780.4098 seconds. GA on the other hand reduced the same field distance of 1700 km to 1190.3km within 397.3308 seconds. The proposed hybrid model reduced the same field distance from 1700 km to 1132.3 km within 550.2527 seconds. This indicates that the proposed hybrid model performed better than PSO and GA separately. A performance test between the proposed hybrid model and other hybrid models showed that merging crossover and mutation operators into PSO gives a better optimal result. MATLAB was used for the iterations.