Quantum Inspired Algorithm for a VRP with Heterogeneous Fleet Mixed Backhauls and Time Windows

This paper presents a new Quantum Inspired Harmony Search algorithm with Variable Population Size QIHSVPS for a complex variant of vehicle routing problem (VRP), called HVRPMBTW (Vehicle Routing Problem with Heterogeneous fleet, Mixed Backhauls and Time Windows). This variant is characterized by a limited number of vehicles with various capacities and costs. The vehicles serve two types of customers: linehauls customers and backhauls customers. Each customer must be visited in a specific interval of time. The authors propose to use quantum principles to accelerate evolution process and variable population size to decrease the number of solution's evaluation, when the improvement is insignificant. This new approach was tested on benchmarks and produces satisfactory results compared to other approaches.