A Man-Machine Approach Toward Solving the Generalized Truck-Dispatching Problem

The literature of various disciplines including engineering, operations research, and management science contains many problems that would have widespread application if methods could be found for solving problems of reasonable size. In general, these problems are combinatoric in nature; moderate to large-scale problems in this class have resisted solution by currently existing algorithms and heuristics. A partial list of these well known problems includes the traveling-salesman problem, the generalized truck-dispatching problem, board wiring, and the construction of minimum cost communication networks with various survival or redundancy demands. The authors report on a man-machine approach for solving the generalized truck-dispatching problem. Their results indicate that the technique is more accurate than previously reported heuristics. They further comment on application of the man-machine technique to other routing, scheduling, and network problems.