Maximizing the profit per unit of time for the TSP with convex resource-dependent travelling times

Abstract

This paper introduces a new problem that is an extension of the travelling salesman problem (TSP) in which the travelling times are resource dependent and the objective is to maximize the profit per unit of time. We present an optimal solution approach comprised of three main steps: (1) calculating the optimal amount of total resource required (regardless of the selected tour); (2) constructing the tour; and (3) assigning the optimal resource to each connection between vertices using the equivalent load method. This solution approach finds the optimal solution with the same computational complexity for solving the classic TSP.

Keywords:

• travelling salesman
• resource allocation
• optimization
• profit per unit of time
• equivalent load method