THE SOLUTION OF TRAVELING SALESMAN PROBLEMS BASED ON INDUSTRIAL DATA

This paper partially replicates a comparison of travelling salesman he uristics carried out by Golden et al. more than a decade ago. It diffe rs in two important ways, however. (1) We consider two heuristics-k-OP T and the space filling curve technique-which were developed after the original comparison. These new techniques appear to add little to the quality of solutions to the test problems utilized here. (2) Instead of test problems using geographical data, ours are based on programs f or parts produced by a numerically controlled machine. Because of the different characteristics of these test problems we reach somewhat dif ferent conclusions concerning the efficacy of the different procedures .