Simulated Annealing for Traveling Salesman Problem with Hotel Selection for a Distribution Company Based in Mexico

Abstract

A distribution company in Mexico covers the travel expenses for 21 sales representatives. Currently, the routes they follow are not established clearly, which can lead to high costs in this subject. A reduction of such cost is sought after, by optimizing the routes for each one of them. The following research finds an improvement on the routes for the sales representative of a distribution company in Mexico. It was done by using the Traveling Salesman Problem with Hotel Selection or Base selections via a Simulated Annealing algorithm. The results show an improvement in a reasonable timeframe by using the Simulated Annealing. It also shows that the maximum process time was of 156.63 minutes, and the least amount of improvement was 24.44% over the current route selection. Applying this model will be beneficial for the company as the company is trying to reduce costs related to the sales representatives such as; fuel cost, hotel cost, and travel expenses.