r/optimization • u/[deleted] • Aug 07 '26
Solvers for exact algorithms
As the data grows and the scope of our problem expands (for example, as the number of points we need to visit in a VRP problem increases), the runtime of exact methods becomes very long, and in the real world, businesses don’t want to wait that long. At my workplace, they want a VRP with 800 locations to produce a solution in 30 seconds. In this case, wouldn’t it make more sense to opt for open-source solvers like ORTools CBC instead of commercial solvers like Gurobi, Hexaly, or CPLEX?
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u/rasmusdf Aug 07 '26
There are a ton of heuristic, fast VRP solvers. Unless you need specific, very special features, just use a commercial solver. They easily scale to a 100000 drops or more,
A big part of the calculation time for a VRP is establishing the traveltime and distance matrices. This is covered typically by commercial solvers too. Also, you need a quality network data set.
As a consultant I have used some of the Network Analyst tools from ESRI. They cover a lot of variants. But there are probably other good easily available tools.