Question

Simon Inc. is making the daily brownie run across the Chicago metropolitan area. They have seven customers and have identified the driving distance (in miles) between each pairwise combination as shown in the table. One-way streets and various construction projects affect driving distances such that the distance from one to the other may not be same depending on which site is the starting point. Identify the most energy efficient route that begins at Simon Inc. headquarters (Simon) and visits each customer once before returning to headquarters. Show work

From/To	Simon	Bosco's	Champion	Damron	Enumclaw	Luther	Jones	Emily
Simon	0	9	97	17	22	34	55	71
Bosco's	14	0	99	29	20	39	84	53
Champion	63	8	0	90	96	89	66	78
Damron	98	90	29	0	46	88	62	13
Enumclaw	27	88	94	81	0	49	53	35
Luther	91	95	62	91	19	0	73	91
Jones	87	2	27	69	11	4	0	25
Emily	61	31	58	13	15	92	44	0

Answer 1

This problem is a milk run which can be solved best using an excel simulation. The steps to solve the same on excel are as follows:-

Formula Sheet for the above excel is:-

The constraints were entered on the solver as shown and " Evolutionary " was selected as the solving Method as we need the most optimum pathSolving we get the optimum path as:-

Which means the path would be Simon --> Jones--> Luther-->Enumclaw-->Emily-->Damron-->Champion-->Bosco-->Simon