From: "R.G. Vickson" <rvickson@engmail.uwaterloo.ca>
Subject: Re: The Travelling Salesman
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 13:02:12 -0400
Newsgroups: sci.math
To: Pete Reeves <pete.reeves@wheatley-associates.co.uk>
Keywords: Vehicle Routing problem

Pete Reeves wrote:

> Apologies if this appears twice, but first post didn't work...
>
> I have found many solutions on the internet to this well known problem, that
> is one salesman has to visit many sites; what's the optimal route.
> Does anybody know about when you have many salesmen, that have over-lapping
> coverage?
>
> Problem: x salemen must visit y sites, each site must only be visited once
> and by only one salesman. What are their optimal (or fairly good) routes?

This is known in the Operations Research literature as the Vehicle Routing
Problem. A nice, fairly recent survey on this problem is:
    N. Christofides,"Vehicle Routing", in _The Travelling Salesman Problem_,
   Lawler, Lenstra, Rinooy Kan and Schmoys (eds), Wiley 1985.

>
>
> Pete Reeves.
>
> Thanks to Carl and Philip Anderson for earlier pointers.