Without AI

In addition to blockchain and AI, carbon footprint is one of the new favorite words of top managers. SAP wants to reinvent the supply chain (logistics) with the intelligent enterprise and improve the carbon footprint of its existing customers along the way. A lot of buzz, a lot of buzzwords - and so far SAP can hardly show anything concrete. But there is another way: A young computer scientist has reinvented the mathematical problem of the traveling salesman without any AI at all. For his outstanding doctoral thesis on the traveling salesman problem, Jakub Tarnawski has been awarded the Dissertation Prize of the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI). The challenge is to find an optimal travel route for visiting multiple locations. With the algorithm developed by Jakub Tarnawski, an approximation of an optimal route can now be calculated much better than before. The insights gained are of great practical use, especially for logistics companies. The improvements in route planning that are now possible can save time, money and CO2 emissions. "Both the runtime of the algorithm and the degree of approximation to an optimal solution are unique," explained GI President Professor Hannes Federrath. (Source: https://gi.de/meldung/verleihung-des-gi-dissertationspreises-2020) The community hasn't heard anything about new algorithms at SAP for a long time. Are the days of innovation over and buzzwords becoming the new beacons? It's hard to separate the real innovations from the bogus issues - SAP should not create more turmoil in this challenge with the intelligent enterprise.