VRP Spreadsheet Solver

The VRP Spreadsheet Solver by Microsoft Excel is an open-source platform specifically designed for solving, representing and visualizing Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs), which unifies Excel, public GIS, and metaheuristics into one software package. This feature makes it possible to solve VRPs, up to a maximum capacity of 200, that could have been impossible to scale, especially without a unified platform like this one.

Previously, businesses tackle each VRP individually, with the outcome and results getting lost in an ever-expanding ocean of information on the internet. It's surprising that no one ever thought of building a unified platform, but the reasons are evident. Most academics create solution algorithms in C++, which might be daunting for non-experts. Meanwhile, for small to medium scale businesses, Microsoft Excel is the standard software for quantitative analysis.

Retrieving driving time and distance data requires the use of a Geographical Information System (GIS) database - this involves investing time and effort. Besides, the outcome of most algorithms usually results in a single total cost value, which might not always be informative. Generally, manually determining a VRP solution, computing its total cost and visualizing it can be a daunting task. That's why constructing a unified platform that brings all the data sources, solution algorithms and visual representations together in one place is a show of brilliance in itself.