The "partition first, route later" approach consists of partitioning the customer sites into subsets in such a way that the total demand of each subset is less that the truck capacity. The algorithm computes the polar coordinates of each customer with respect to the depot. The sites are then sorted by increasing polar angle. Sites in the same subset have consecutive polar angles. The subsets are built such as to minimize the total number of trucks.

The second phase of the sweep algorithm finds a shortest tour through the customer sites and the depot in each subset.

The "Radius Sweep Algorithm" differs from the classic sweep method by the way the customers are assigned to subset. In the radius sweep method, the customers are first partitioned into two sets: the customers that are close to the depot and the customers that are far away from the depot. The user enters the fraction of the maximum distance to the depot that separates the customers that are close to and far from the depot. For example, if the user chooses a fraction of 0.7 and that the customer site that is furthest from the depot is at a distance of 1000 then all sites within 700 are "close" and the others are "far". The sweep algorithm is then applied to each of the two subsets.