Traditional TURF optimization uses an exhaustive search approach, examining all possible portfolios (sets of items) of a specific size en route to discovering the optimal portfolio(s). However, problems can quickly become too large for exhaustive search to compute within reasonable time frames. A shortcut, heuristic approach is described called Stepwise TURF + Swaps that finds all 300 top portfolios in three very large commercial data sets. The heuristic searches take at most a few minutes, whereas the exhaustive search would take many days or years to compute.

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