2010 Diploma Thesis Title: Solving the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows (PDPTW) with Simulated Annealing (SA) Metahuristic algorithm.

In this thesis the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows (PDPTW) is solved by a Simulated Annealing (SA) Metaheuristic algorithm.The solution space is examined (a) by using new and existing heuristic methods and (b) byapplying three different SA restarting strategies. The developed strategies areevaluated usingthe benchmark problem instances by Li and Lim (2001).Our most effective strategy matched the best known solution on 52 out of 56 instances (93% success rate). The experimental results show that the proposed method solves efficiently the PDPTW. The toolkit developedcanbe further utilized bythe Design, Operations & Production Systems Lab (DeOPSys) of the Financial Management Engineering (FME) Department of the University of the Aegean, onsimilar Pickup and Delivery problems.