A comprehensive review on NSGA-II for multi-objective combinatorial optimization problems

Abstract

This paper provides an extensive review of the popular multi-objective optimization algorithm NSGA-II for selected combinatorial optimization problems viz. assignment problem, allocation problem, travelling salesman problem, vehicle routing problem, scheduling problem, and knapsack problem. It is identified that based on the manner in which NSGA-II has been implemented for solving the aforementioned group of problems, there can be three categories: Conventional NSGA-II, where the authors have implemented the basic version of NSGA-II, without making any changes in the operators; the second one is Modified NSGA-II, where the researchers have implemented NSGA-II after making some changes into it and finally, Hybrid NSGA-II variants, where the researchers have hybridized the conventional and modified NSGA-II with some other technique. The article analyses the modifications in NSGA-II and also discusses the various performance assessment techniques used by the researchers, i.e., test instances, performance metrics, statistical tests, case studies, benchmarking with other state-of-the-art algorithms. Additionally, the paper also provides a brief bibliometric analysis based on the work done in this study.