Deciding which heuristic to use

IBM ILOG Dispatcher User's Manual > Developing Dispatcher Applications > Developing Your Own First Solution Heuristics > Using the predefined first solution heuristics > Deciding which heuristic to use

Deciding which heuristic to use

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The Dispatcher predefined first solution heuristics can be placed in a rough hierarchy based on performance (with the fastest heuristic listed first):

Sweep > nearest-to-depot > nearest addition > savings > insertion > generate

However, certain problems respond more effectively to certain heuristics. Here are some general guidelines:

If your vehicles have fixed starting and ending points, use a savings heuristic. Otherwise, use nearest addition.
If your vehicles have fixed starting and ending points, the problem is not too constrained, and you have coordinates, use sweep.
When the problem is really hard to solve and not too large, use insertion directly or insert visits one-by-one using IloInsertVisit. This approach can also be interesting if you want to update an already existing solution or if you already know the order of some visits.
Only use generate on small problems.

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