A Heuristic Approach for a Minimum Time Dispatch Problem
Ayman Kassem · 43rd AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit · 2005
In this paper, the formulation and the solution procedure of a minimum time dispatch problem (MTDP) is given. The problem can be summarized as finding the minimum time and path to transfer time sensitive materials from a dispatch center to certain targets or vice versa. It is a famous problem with many civil and military applications. A heuristic approach using two stages formulation is given here. The first stage is an iterative k-mean algorithm to cluster targets to lie within specific distance and the next stage is traveling salesman problem, solved with Genetic Algorithms (GA), to find the minimum path. The details of the problem and the solution procedure are given with simple test cases.