Using simulated annealing to solve routing and location problems
Bruce Golden, Christopher C. Skiścim · Naval Research Logistics Quarterly · 1986
Abstract In recent papers by Kirkpatrick et al., an analogy between the statistical mechanics of large multivariate physical systems and combinatorial optimization has been presented and used to develop a general strategy for solving discrete optimization problems. The method relies on probabilistically accepting intermediate increases in the objective function through a set of user‐controlled parameters. It is argued that by taking such controlled uphill steps, from time to time, a high quality solution can eventually be found in a moderate amount of computer time. In this paper, we implement this idea, apply it to the traveling salesman problem and the p‐median location problem, and test the approach extensively.