Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is the most important as well as difficult tasking the present context of rapid urbanization. In this study, a comparison has been done using Geographical information system(GIS) and artificial neural network(ANN) to determine optimum route and time for the collection of solid waste during each single trip by each type of collection vehicle; this will reduce the cost involved in collection phase of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). The area selected for the study was Erode city which is located in north west of Tamil Nadu, India. The optimum route analysis have been carried out using both GIS and ANN tools. Multiple structures of ANN have been analyzed by modifying the hidden layers. Based on the results, the optimized structure of the network was found. The suggested model is validated by the high value of the coefficient of regression, minimum value of mean square error. Based on these performance parameters, it is found that the ANN model gives optimum results. Implementing these optimum routes will leads to a cost-effective solid waste management system.