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The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (CVRPTW) is a classic NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem widely applied in logistics distribution and transportation management. Its complexity stems from the constraints of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Linjiang Cao , Maonan Wang , Xi Xiong

Combinatorial optimization serves as an essential part in many modern industrial applications. A great number of the problems are offline setting due to safety and/or cost issues. While simulation-based approaches appear difficult to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-21 Wenpeng Wei , Toshiko Aizono

Since the 1990s, considerable empirical work has been carried out to train statistical models, such as neural networks (NNs), as learned heuristics for combinatorial optimization (CO) problems. When successful, such an approach eliminates…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-21 Orit Davidovich , Shimrit Shtern , Segev Wasserkrug , Nimrod Megiddo

Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) has emerged as a promising approach for NP-hard problems. However, prevailing RL-based methods suffer from low sample efficiency due to sparse rewards and underused solutions. We propose Best-anchored…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Zijun Liao , Jinbiao Chen , Debing Wang , Zizhen Zhang , Jiahai Wang

Model-free deep-reinforcement-based learning algorithms have been applied to a range of COPs~\cite{bello2016neural}~\cite{kool2018attention}~\cite{nazari2018reinforcement}. However, these approaches suffer from two key challenges when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-01 Nasrin Sultana , Jeffrey Chan , Tabinda Sarwar , A. K. Qin

Exploring machine learning techniques for addressing vehicle routing problems has attracted considerable research attention. To achieve decent and efficient solutions, existing deep models for vehicle routing problems are typically trained…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Jingwen Li , Zhiguang Cao , Yaoxin Wu , Tang Liu

Neural combinatorial optimization (NCO) has gained significant attention due to the potential of deep learning to efficiently solve combinatorial optimization problems. NCO has been widely applied to job shop scheduling problems (JSPs) with…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-19 Igor G. Smit , Yaoxin Wu , Pavel Troubil , Yingqian Zhang , Wim P. M. Nuijten

Current methods for end-to-end constructive neural combinatorial optimization usually train a policy using behavior cloning from expert solutions or policy gradient methods from reinforcement learning. While behavior cloning is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Jonathan Pirnay , Dominik G. Grimm

Combinatorial optimization (CO) problems, central to decision-making scenarios like logistics and manufacturing, are traditionally solved using problem-specific algorithms requiring significant domain expertise. While large language models…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-09-24 Xia Jiang , Yaoxin Wu , Minshuo Li , Zhiguang Cao , Yingqian Zhang

The primary paradigm in Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) are construction methods, where a neural network is trained to sequentially add one solution component at a time until a complete solution is constructed. We observe that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-08 Tim Dernedde , Daniela Thyssens , Lars Schmidt-Thieme

Complex real-life routing challenges can be modeled as variations of well-known combinatorial optimization problems. These routing problems have long been studied and are difficult to solve at scale. The particular setting may also make…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2020-09-23 Marijn van Knippenberg , Mike Holenderski , Vlado Menkovski

Combinatorial Optimization underpins many real-world applications and yet, designing performant algorithms to solve these complex, typically NP-hard, problems remains a significant research challenge. Reinforcement Learning (RL) provides a…

Despite enjoying desirable efficiency and reduced reliance on domain expertise, existing neural methods for vehicle routing problems (VRPs) suffer from severe robustness issues -- their performance significantly deteriorates on clean…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-10-08 Jianan Zhou , Yaoxin Wu , Zhiguang Cao , Wen Song , Jie Zhang , Zhiqi Shen

Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) is an emerging domain where deep learning techniques are employed to address combinatorial optimization problems as a standalone solver. Despite their potential, existing NCO methods often suffer from…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2024-08-06 Andoni I. Garmendia , Quentin Cappart , Josu Ceberio , Alexander Mendiburu

Combinatorial optimization problem (COP) over graphs is a fundamental challenge in optimization. Reinforcement learning (RL) has recently emerged as a new framework to tackle these problems and has demonstrated promising results. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-05 Fan Yao , Renqin Cai , Hongning Wang

Using machine learning to solve combinatorial optimization (CO) problems is challenging, especially when the data is unlabeled. This work proposes an unsupervised learning framework for CO problems. Our framework follows a standard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-25 Haoyu Wang , Nan Wu , Hang Yang , Cong Hao , Pan Li

Machine learning has increasingly been employed to solve NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems, resulting in the emergence of neural solvers that demonstrate remarkable performance, even with minimal domain-specific knowledge. To…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-05-27 Chengrui Gao , Haopu Shang , Ke Xue , Chao Qian

Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is one of the most complex NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem in transportation and logistics that requires a dynamic solution approach. In this paper we present a new hybrid approach that combines the…

The constructive approach within Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) treats a combinatorial optimization problem as a finite Markov decision process, where solutions are built incrementally through a sequence of decisions guided by a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Jonathan Pirnay , Dominik G. Grimm

The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) underpins modern last-mile logistics. Current Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) methods construct CVRP solutions autoregressively, inheriting sequential decoding bottlenecks, sensitivity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Samuel J. K. Chin , Maximilian Schiffer