Frequently asked questions
We know the needs of our customers and we understand what interests them. Here is a collection of frequently asked questions.
The travelling salesman problem – TSP - what is it?
The travelling salesman problem (TSP) asks the following question: “Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each city exactly once and returns to the origin city?” It is an NP-hard problem in combinatorial optimization, important in theoretical computer science and operations research.
The travelling purchaser problem and the vehicle routing problem are both generalizations of TSP.
Vehicle routing problem - VRP - what is it?
The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a combinatorial optimization and integer programming problem which asks “What is the optimal set of routes for a fleet of vehicles to traverse in order to deliver to a given set of customers?”. It generalises the well-known travelling salesman problem (TSP).
Often, the context is that of delivering goods located at a central depot to customers who have placed orders for such goods. The objective of the VRP is to minimize the total route cost.
The VRP has many direct applications in industry. In fact, the use of computer optimization programs can give savings of 5% to a company as transportation is usually a significant component of the cost of a product. Consequently, any savings created by the VRP, even less than 5%, are significant.