Re: Next generation COBOL?

Oliver Wong wrote:
One classic NP problem is called "Travelling Salesman". The problem is, given a list of cities with paths between them of given lengths, what is the most efficient order to visit the cities in so that the Salemans (who has to visit every city at least once) can spend the least amount of gasoline?

You surprised me on that one. I was never even remotely involved. But I do recall perhaps thirty/forty years ago there was mainframe software for routing delivery trucks to get optimum use. How effective, I have no idea.

Perhaps on a manual basis, the UK Milk Marketing Board, (don't even know if it exists now), did adjust farm pick-up points between 'collectors' (dairy companies) so that the dairy company had a fairly straight route from Farmer A through to Farmer Z, leading back to the dairy drop-off point, which might just be liquid milk to go into bottles, (in those days), or alternatively to a Creamery where the raw milk was turned into cheese, butter etc. (I just know of it, because it was the first application computerized - however even the simple A to Z route - what sort of herd, primarily Jersey I believe but, Ayshire, Hereford etc., giving different butterfat contents - which a particular Creamery might/might not want).

Frankly I doubt mainframe would have done it for us, because the problem would have needed solving on an inter-active basis, immediately. Depending upon what our milk trucks were carrying, there might be a delivery of say 'Roller Skimmed' milk powder, a curds and/or whey by-product of butter/cheese-making. Vehicle A is going say from South West to the Midlands to drop off at a cookie/biscuit making factory. Naturally driver had to return to base in S.W., so on the route back could we divert him to our Uttoxeter creamery, perhaps to pick-up something for a manufacturer located at Bristol in the S.W.

It was done manually, on the fly, as different orders were taken. As you can imagine, even somebody with the corporation's well being in sight, i.e. cost and efficiency, it was still much a hit and miss affair.

Richard - just a thought - delivery scheduling - ring any bells with you as regards ICL ?

Jimmy
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