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Home | Courses | Heuristic Optimization Methods (Not Offered in 2023-24)
Course

Heuristic Optimization Methods (Not Offered in 2023-24)

  • Teacher(s)
    Daniele Vigo
  • Research field
    Operations Analytics
  • Dates
    Period 1 - Sep 04, 2023 to Oct 27, 2023
  • Course type
    Field
  • Program year
    Second
  • Credits
    3

Course description

Cancelled for 2023/2024.

Heuristics form an indispensable tool for everyone working in operations management because problems arising from practice are often too hard to solve exactly and heuristics are relatively simple methods that may provide feasible solutions of good quality. The course is about heuristics to solve general problems but uses logistics optimization problems such as the vehicle routing problem as examples of specific implementations. The field of routing is in fact so rich that virtually all published heuristic ideas have been applied to it. The course is further divided into two parts, each of which first covers general problems and then focuses on routing:

  • Classical heuristics to construct a feasible solution and improvement heuristics based on structured local search
  • Metaheuristics aiming at escaping local optima
  • All methods will be illustrated through actual implementations in high level language.

Course literature

The following list of mandatory readings are considered essential for your learning experience. These books are also part of the exam material. Changes in the reading list will be communicated on Canvas.

Lecture notes and coding companion will be available on Canvas.

Selection of chapters from these books:

  • Michalewicz, Z. and Fogel, D.B. (2004). How to solve it: modern heuristics. Springer.
  • Talbi, El-Ghazali (2009). Metaheuristics: From Design to Implementation. Wiley.
  • Toth, P. and Vigo, D. (2002). The Vehicle Routing Problem, 1st edition. SIAM.
  • Toth, P. and Vigo, D. (2014). Vehicle Routing: Problems, Methods and Applications, 2nd edition. SIAM.