Beware of the Classical Benchmark Instances for the Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Soulignac, Francisco J.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Soulignac, Francisco J.
author_facet Soulignac, Francisco J.
contents We propose a simple and exact method for the Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows and Makespan objective (\TSPTW-M) that solves all instances of the classical benchmark with $50$ or more customers in less than ten seconds each. Applying this algorithm as an off-the-shelf method, we also solve all but one of these instances for the Duration objective. Our main conclusion is that these instances alone are no longer representative for evaluating the TSPTW-M and its Duration variant: their structure can be exploited to yield results that seem outstanding at first glance. Additionally, caution is advised when designing hard training sets for machine learning algorithms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_01064
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beware of the Classical Benchmark Instances for the Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows
Soulignac, Francisco J.
Data Structures and Algorithms
Discrete Mathematics
We propose a simple and exact method for the Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows and Makespan objective (\TSPTW-M) that solves all instances of the classical benchmark with $50$ or more customers in less than ten seconds each. Applying this algorithm as an off-the-shelf method, we also solve all but one of these instances for the Duration objective. Our main conclusion is that these instances alone are no longer representative for evaluating the TSPTW-M and its Duration variant: their structure can be exploited to yield results that seem outstanding at first glance. Additionally, caution is advised when designing hard training sets for machine learning algorithms.
title Beware of the Classical Benchmark Instances for the Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Discrete Mathematics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01064