PTV Group - Logistics Forum

Hi there,

PTV recommends to license the Gurobi Solver for performing complex mathematical calculations in a very performant and accurate way. Please notice the following:

• There are several core benefits of such a solver
  • The free CBC solver does not provide any service level - purely maintained by community (you could have to wait for months for a solution). GUROBI offers service levels.
  • Significant improvement of performance (factor 10 and more)
  • Problems of larger size won't terminate successful with CBC. To get a proper result at all you would need GUROBI
  • Solution quality: as discussed in this thread the output quality of the GUROBI solutions could be better than with the CBC.
  • Access to features which are Gurobi only
• The usage of Gurobi Solver is mandatory for following use cases / procedures:
  • Overnight stays in visit planning (OvernightStayOptions, Hotel)
  • Minimizing the workload imbalances between days (see PlanVisitsOptions, WorkloadOptions)
• It is highly recommended to use the Gurobi solver
  • when balancing the visit planning
  • when planning field forces with a higher number of visits, field workers and clusters

To get a trial version straight from the Gurobi page click here or check this article.
Attention: GUROBI does not work with xServer Internet - it is a pure onPremise approach!


PTV defined the process how to receive a Gurobi license as follows:

• Please contact your sales partner. PTV provides the corresponding Gurobi license (for testing and productive use). As customer (prospect) of PTV, you don’t need to contact Gurobi directly. This service is offered by PTV to take care of the required license.
• Based on the business use case, the contact partner can offer various license types how to use the Gurobi solver in customer’s system environment. Following standard types are available:

  License type for perpetual and subscription	Overview
  Named User	Single machine license for a single named person, unlimited simultaneous uses.
  Unlimited Use, Unlimited User	Single machine license for unlimited simultaneous users and uses.
  Compute Server	Allows an unlimited number of client machines to submit jobs to a server.

• Licence for Gurobi’s Cloud Service

  License type	Overview
  Bronze	Situations where the user wants to solve one model at a time and doesn’t need the features or flexibility of Compute Server. Allows at most one simultaneous use.
  Silver	More active development and deployment situations where the hourly charge is more of a factor. Includes a Compute Server license which allows an unlimited number of client machines to submit jobs to a server.
  Gold	The same functionality as Silver, but with a lower per hour rate for more frequent usage.

  Gurobi Cloud billing is measured in 0.01 hours (36 seconds), with a minimum charge of 0.50 hours. The time is measured from when the cloud computer is started to when it is shut down, regardless of whether the computer is busy or idle.

We are happy to discuss the right license types for your business applications.

Best regards,
Bernd