Concrete Vehicle Scheduling Based on Immune Genetic Algorithm

At present, the demand for ready-mixed concrete (RMC) in construction industry is increasing day by day, and the supply mode of multiple delivery depots corresponding to multiple construction sites has been widely used. In order to further improve the joint distribution efficiency between various delivery depots, this research establishes a multiobjective optimal distribution model with time window constraints and demand postponement attributes for the problem that the subbatching plants need to work together. The model divides the reasons for demand postponement into two types: the constraint for timely unloading of trucks cannot be met on time and the constraint for timely pouring at the construction site cannot be met on time. This work improved the coding method of genetic algorithm based on the characteristics of the distribution model. Using hierarchical real-coding form, the coding operator of each layer can be evolved separately, which ensures the globality of the search, and, at the same time, an improved immune operator is added to ensure the local search performance. By comparison, the results obtained by improved GA are 7.05% higher than those of the standard GA, and the early convergence speed of improved GA is obviously better than that of the standard GA. The simulation experiments show that the total trucks’ waiting time during the process of providing delivery services from 5 concrete plants to 8 construction sites is 769 minutes, and the total waiting time of 8 construction sites is 507 minutes. Through practical case analysis, this work can enable RMC production enterprises and construction sites to effectively reduce the waiting time of corresponding operations, and the obtained results are close to the simulation results. The proposed method indeed improves the efficiency of RMC distribution.