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So I've been given at work a project which consist on finding optimal pathing for trucks in certain custom scenarios. When I discovered this tool I thought it worked wonders for what I understood the project was back then, but obviously we are iterating the product with the client and each time we add more depth to the problem.

My question is, do you think that OR-tools is appropiate for a software that is going to evolve in a not predictable way? My concern is that it might lack the flexibility to tackle some requisite from the client and I'm forced to move to another tool.

I came to this realization when I discovered that it doesn't allow for several vehicles to visit one single node which is a very limiting factor, I've found ways to get around that in the community, but it honestly made me think twice about it.

I apologize in advance if the question is too vague.

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    $\begingroup$ Sorry, but this explicitly violates the rules of Stack Overflow, and Stack Exchange. This being said, the routing module of OR-Tools is used extensively by companies. $\endgroup$
    – Laurent Perron
    Dec 1, 2021 at 3:47
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    $\begingroup$ 1. "It does not allow for several vehicles to visit one node": if you duplicate the node as many times as necessary, you can get away with this. 2. You cannot always have your cake and eat it too. This is the price to pay for free, open-source, amazing software. $\endgroup$
    – Kuifje
    Dec 1, 2021 at 9:40
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    $\begingroup$ Maybe the right way to formulate this question is: What are the limitations of or-tools when solving vehicle routing problems? Are there some classical attributes that cannot be handled or for which results would not likely be very good? For example, time-dependent travel times, heterogeneous fleet, split deliveries? $\endgroup$
    – fontanf
    Dec 2, 2021 at 23:12
  • $\begingroup$ I kept the question vague on purpose due to the fact I still don't know all the specific requirements from our client and I was precisely looking for opinions of people that have worked with it in a professional setting. So far it's worked nicely for what I've needed to do and I hope it can keep up. Since I plan on keeping working with it I'll probably show up around here from time to time so I'll keep in mind @fontanf advice on how to properly write questions here. The few answers provided here certainly gave me some peace. $\endgroup$
    – Ismael Manzanares Carmona
    Dec 3, 2021 at 10:29

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Vehicle routing problems in the real world often require custom scenarios, and no VRP solver does everything, so this is a good question.

The VRP solver in OR-Tools is open source (you could fork it and add your own customizations if you wanted), and new features have been added to it continually for over a decade. And speaking for Google, we're committed to maintaining it. Hopefully that will put you at ease.

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