Abstract: Aiming at the problem that the different urgency of work station in material demand affects the priority of distribution, an optimization model and algorithm are proposed for vehicle configuration and distribution path of single-line supermarket considering the priority of station distribution. Firstly, based on the distribution process of single-line supermarket, a mathematical model is constructed, in which the priority of distribution is expressed by the urgency coefficient of material demand, with the objective to minimize the vehicle allocation and the shortest route. Secondly, an improved ant colony algorithm with control search factors is proposed to solve the problem. By setting different control search factors in different periods of iteration to change the node selection probability, the search speed of the optimal solution is improved and the algorithm is avoided to fall into the local optimum. Finally, through the analysis of examples, the correctness of the model is verified, and it is also proved that the improved ant colony algorithm can realize the priority distribution of workstations with a high degree of urgency for material requirements. Compared with the basic ant colony algorithm, the improved ant colony algorithm has advantages in calculation results and algorithm running time.

Key words: single-line supermarket, vehicle allocation, improved ant colony algorithm, control search factor, material demand urgency factor