Exploring Desirable Configurations in Global Logistics with Heuristic Search in Answer Set Programming

In the design of global logistics problems, the solution spaces are typically extremely large. To demonstrate how these challenges can be addressed in Answer Set Programming (ASP), this work investigates a representative industrial use case of a global logistics problem in the aerospace problem domain. An exploration of specific areas of the search space is done by using heuristic-driven solving for the formulation of domain heuristics that guide the solver to potentially desirable configurations. A quantitative evaluation on the Key Performance Indicators and a qualitative evaluation on the variability of the models by means of a similarity analysis shows promising results.