The Traveling-Salesman-Problem (TSP) commonly treated as one of the outstanding combinatorial problems. Optimal solutions of large-scale TSP are special cases of a geografic nature; therefore, they are related to metric spaces. In strict contradiction to this case, optimum solutions for general TSP are only posible by means of a complete enumeration of the n! potential tours; hence, they are not thought to be efficiently soluble.

Therefore, we introduce a new separation method (ZIP) that surpasses combinatorically the traditional limit of optimum solutions for general TSP. In principle, the new method may as well be applied to non-symmetric tours. Additional examples contain a multitude of new ideas for further applications. (german)

Summary of the new solution

About the history of the ZIP-method

(18.09.2004)