D‑Wave Showcases Annealing Solutions for Real-World Logistics at USC Forum

In early November 2024, D-Wave Quantum Inc. showcased its Advantage quantum annealing system at the Quantum Technologies Forum, hosted by the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering. The event offered a rare and highly practical look into how quantum annealing—often viewed as a niche alternative to gate-based quantum computing—is already powering live logistics optimization projects across vehicle routing, cargo scheduling, and traffic-flow simulation.

Held on USC’s Los Angeles campus, the forum brought together researchers, transportation officials, freight technology leaders, and software developers to engage directly with real-time demonstrations, annealing code samples, and pilot deployment insights. The clear message: quantum annealing is no longer confined to theory or simulation—it's solving real problems in the logistics space today.

Quantum Technologies Forum: Event Overview

The USC Quantum Technologies Forum, now in its second year, serves as a convergence point for stakeholders exploring the intersection of quantum innovation and applied engineering. This year’s event focused on the transportation and logistics sector, where optimization challenges loom large and computational bottlenecks limit traditional approaches.

At the center of the program was D-Wave’s Advantage quantum processing unit (QPU)—a system built specifically to solve combinatorial optimization problems using quantum annealing. Unlike gate-based quantum computers that perform operations on qubits using logic gates, annealers find the lowest-energy configuration of a system, making them uniquely suited to problems involving route optimization, scheduling, allocation, and flow modeling.

USC currently hosts the largest Advantage system in the United States, a strategic placement that has made the university a hub for quantum logistics research, especially across California’s vital freight corridor, which includes the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, I-5 trucking routes, and urban freight networks in Los Angeles County.

Real-Time Use Cases: Logistics Applications in Focus

D-Wave’s presentation went beyond theory, delivering live demonstrations of logistics optimization using the Advantage system via the Leap quantum cloud platform. The use cases demonstrated at the forum included:

1. Adaptive Vehicle Routing for Urban Delivery

D-Wave’s team walked attendees through a quantum-powered model for last-mile delivery optimization. Using real-time traffic data from USC’s partners in Los Angeles, the model illustrated how a fleet of delivery vehicles could be routed to minimize travel time, congestion exposure, and energy consumption.

Traditional route planning systems often rely on heuristics like Dijkstra’s algorithm or Ant Colony Optimization. These can fall short when the number of delivery stops, time windows, and road constraints increases—especially in cities with highly dynamic conditions. D-Wave’s annealing approach was able to reoptimize delivery paths in near-real-time, accounting for updated traffic flows and drop-off schedules.

2. Cargo Scheduling at Freight Terminals

Another demonstration focused on optimizing cargo loading and departure schedules at a container port. The model accounted for constraints such as dock availability, crane allocation, shipping deadlines, and load weight limits. Using a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) formulation, the system produced optimized cargo movement schedules in seconds—providing a feasible solution where classical solvers would often time out or revert to suboptimal approximations.

3. Urban Traffic Flow Simulation

In partnership with USC’s transportation research team and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT), D-Wave showcased a traffic-light sequencing model designed to minimize total wait times and reduce stop-and-go traffic on key arterial roads. This use case highlighted how annealing-based optimization can influence macro-level traffic behavior, with downstream benefits for fuel consumption, delivery efficiency, and air quality.

The live session included code samples and dashboard visualizations via Leap, providing transparency and usability for logistics analysts, city planners, and software engineers.

Making Quantum Accessible: The Leap Platform and Developer Community

One of the key takeaways from the event was the growing accessibility of quantum annealing tools. Through the Leap cloud platform, developers and researchers can write, submit, and monitor quantum jobs on the Advantage QPU using Python APIs, open-source libraries, and Jupyter notebooks.

D-Wave highlighted its logistics-specific code libraries, which include templates for:

Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) models

Job shop scheduling

Bin packing and container loading

Multimodal fleet assignment

By lowering the barrier to entry, Leap enables logistics professionals—who may not have deep quantum expertise—to experiment with real problem formulations and test quantum performance against classical solvers.

Additionally, the company’s active developer community, including academic contributors, logistics startups, and port authorities, is building a repository of working examples, benchmarks, and deployment strategies.

Regional and Industry Momentum: West Coast as a Quantum Logistics Testbed

The forum underscored how USC’s Advantage system has become a regional anchor for logistics quantum research. Southern California’s dense network of logistics hubs, research institutions, and municipal infrastructure agencies has created fertile ground for early-stage quantum pilots.

Key partnerships include:

Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach, exploring container yard scheduling and truck flow optimization

Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), assessing quantum models for emergency freight routing during disasters

City of Los Angeles, using quantum-assisted simulations for adaptive signal control in congested delivery corridors

In the private sector, freight forwarders, urban mobility startups, and transportation software developers are increasingly tapping into USC and D-Wave resources to test quantum optimization modules for commercial logistics platforms.

These partnerships demonstrate that quantum annealing’s speed and simplicity in solving constrained optimization problems give it an edge for real-time logistics use cases, particularly when paired with high-frequency input from IoT devices, GPS systems, and traffic management platforms.

Broader Implications: Quantum Annealing's Growing Logistics Footprint

While much of the quantum computing world is focused on the promise of fault-tolerant, gate-based machines, D-Wave’s progress with annealing illustrates a parallel—and increasingly viable—path to industrial adoption.

Quantum annealing is especially well-matched to logistics applications because:

It handles discrete, binary decision problems naturally

It operates with high throughput on large-scale QUBO models

It requires less error correction, making it feasible on current hardware

It integrates well with hybrid workflows, where classical systems feed data into quantum solvers in an iterative loop

With logistics characterized by NP-hard challenges that don’t scale well on classical infrastructure, D-Wave's technology provides an immediate toolset for tackling specific, high-impact problems.

Conclusion: Quantum Annealing in Real Logistics—From Pilot to Practice

The November 2024 Quantum Technologies Forum at USC served as a proof point for the growing maturity and real-world utility of quantum annealing, particularly in the logistics sector. D-Wave’s live demonstrations, regional collaborations, and open-source development support have laid the foundation for quantum-powered logistics optimization pilots that move beyond research and into the domain of operational planning.

As more logistics firms, city planners, and infrastructure providers seek tools that can handle complexity, adapt dynamically, and scale cost-effectively, quantum annealing is emerging not as a distant future vision, but as a ready-now solution.

The combination of hardware accessibility, cloud integration via Leap, and practical use case libraries means that organizations don’t have to wait for a fault-tolerant quantum future. They can start solving logistics problems today—with quantum annealing systems already proving their worth in the field.