Grouping stops on a route

Question

I work on a project where I have to organize service routes for a pest control company in our software package. We discussed several options to organize the stops for each day in the most efficient manner possible.

Each day we have 80-100 stops, 10 or so stops per tech, and these stops can, for the most part, be moved up to 7 days either way in the month to accomodate efficiency.

Ignoring the stops that can't be moved, what would be a good starting point to get the customers organized into days where the shortest distances are driven by the technicians?

We have lat and long on every stop. For now, we are not worrying about geographic barriers like bridges, rivers, etc. We might tackle that later, but as the crow flies is good enough for now. Any ideas?

EDIT:

We also have "map grids" for each customer. Each map grid is a square half mile, and are in a perfect grid across our entire service territory. These could be used for grouping and containing routes. Usually our routes contain about 100 grids in a semi-tight grouping.

Answer 1

Similar to this.

You start with a naive travel order, and then start randomly swapping entries. Each time you swap, you measure the total length of the trip, and if the new length is better you keep it, otherwise you undo the swap.

Do it a thousand times or so, and the trip should start to be reasonable.