The solution of travelling salesman problems based on industrial data

This paper partially replicates a comparison of travelling salesman heuristics carried out by Golden et al. more than a decade ago. It differs in two important ways, however. (1) It considers two heuristics-k-OPT 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, these are based on programs for parts produced by a numerically controlled machine. Because of the different characteristics of these test problems, somewhat different conclusions concerning the efficacy of the different procedures are reached.