Most people think optimization is about “making models smarter.”

In reality, it’s often about making search less dumb.

I recently worked on a hybrid metaheuristic for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW)—a classic logistics problem where exact methods quickly become impractical.

It can be viewed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S1947828325000025

Instead of relying on a single strategy, I combined simple heuristics (like nearest-neighbor initialization) with evolutionary search (genetic algorithms + mutation strategies).