6.2 Meta-heuristic algorithms for solving two interconnected vehicle routing
problems in a hospital complex
This paper inscribes a real – world logistics problem, which is applied in the hospital
complex of tours in France. This case have two – level vehicle routing problem with time
windows, a heterogeneous fleet, multi – depot, multi – commodity and split delivery.
The first level considers vehicle routing for set of vehicle deliver to set of hospital
units with medicine clean linen, meal, different supplies, patient file and collect garbage and
used linen. The second level considers the employee routing between hospital units
There are two type of Meta – heuristics for this problem. First method is a genetic
algorithm (GA), which is well – known method to solving VRP. It contains changing the
population through selecting, cross over and mutation operators. Second method is Tabu