Lead-time scoring rewards teams that find good solutions early and hold them. A public leaderboard updates in real time. Hexaly Optimizer produces the baseline — and doesn't compete.
All participants must hold a current SMIO membership. Through the ALIO alliance, members of other Latin American OR societies can obtain SMIO membership at a discounted rate.
Teams of up to 3 current undergraduate students plus 1 guide — defined as anyone who is not a current undergraduate student (graduate student, professor, or industry professional).
Aligns with SMIO's educational mission and encourages mentorship in the OR community.
Teams of up to 3 participants, no restrictions on profile. Open to students, researchers, and industry professionals.
Maximizes solution quality and opens the competition to the broader OR community.
For each instance, the team holding the best participant solution accumulates points every calendar day they maintain it. A bonus is awarded for holding the best solution at the close of the competition.
The bonus value B will be announced with the full competition rules. The team with the highest total score wins in each track.
Before the competition opens, Hexaly Optimizer runs on all 30 instances to produce a baseline solution for each one. These baselines are published as a reference but do not participate in the leaderboard.
At the end of the competition, results are presented alongside the Hexaly baseline, providing a clear comparison for each instance. This preserves the narrative of the community benchmarking against a strong industrial solver while ensuring the competition always has a well-defined winner.
Solutions that set a new best are recorded but not published until the competition ends — preventing teams from locally improving each other's results.
| Leaderboard | Description |
|---|---|
| Per-instance | Chronological evolution of the best participant solution for each instance (team, cost, timestamp). |
| Global ranking | Aggregate score of each team, updated in real time. |
| Hexaly comparison | For each instance, the Hexaly baseline cost alongside the current best participant solution, with the percentage gap. |
Designed to keep the competition fair, open, and technically unconstrained.
Teams may use any computational resources available to them.
Commercial solvers, open-source tools, or custom implementations. Hexaly provides free academic licenses to all registered participants.
Every participant must be a valid SMIO member. Through the ALIO alliance, members of other national societies can obtain SMIO membership at a discounted rate.
Each person may belong to only one team.
Solutions must be submitted through the web platform. No manual or email submissions.
By participating, teams agree that their final solutions (but not their code) may be published as part of a post-competition benchmark library.