Multi stop planning

[ayadav8]

Hello,

I have an Alteryx designer license. I got a multi-stop truck planning problem. The problem has a fixed start point and has a couple of delivery points. I want to determine the truck route where the miles traveled is least. Is this something achievable in Alteryx? Do I need Alteryx with spatial data? 

Currently, I use Google maps to calculate the distance for all possible combination of stops and select the least one.

Thanks!

[CharlieS]

It sounds like you're referring to the infamous "Travelling Salesman Problem". Alteryx would definitely be a useful tool for this, but spatial data is required to calculate the drive distance miles for each option. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Discussions/Optimal-Routing/td-p/19872

[ayadav8]

@CharlieS thanks for replying. Yeah, I agree it is similar to the Travelling salesman problem. I see the post was created two years back. Is the optimization suite available yet?

[CharlieS · Accepted solution]

The "Location Optimization Macro" type mentioned in that post is available in Designer versions 10.6+. An example application of that macro can be found under Help>Sample Workflows>Macro Workflows>Location Optimization Allocate.

It's my understanding that the Location Optimization macro type is designed to optimize a set of locations based on characteristics of those individual points, not optimize a route like the Travelling Salesman Problem. The Optimization tool is also available, but is also different from the Travelling Salesman type of route optimization.

https://help.alteryx.com/2018.2/Optimization.htm

I'm not aware of a current Alteryx feature that will single-handedly solve the Travelling Salesman problem. If you have a relatively small amount of points, I suggest the brute force approach and generate all possible combinations and select the best result.