Tabu search for non-permutation flowshop scheduling problem with minimizing total tardiness

This paper deals with the non-permutation flowshop problem which means that the job sequences are allowed to be different on machines. The objective function is minimizing the total tardiness. Firstly, three mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) models for non-permutation flowshop problems are described, and then are analyzed and assessed their relative effectiveness. Secondly, two Tabu search based algorithms, denoted by LH1 and LH2, are proposed to solve the complicated non-permutation flowshop problems. The algorithms are constructed on specific neighborhood structures which enable the searching method effective. Finally, the performance is evaluated against Taillard’s famous benchmark. Computational experiments show that the proposed algorithms, LH1 and LH2, are significantly superior to the L_TS algorithm. And the percentages of improved permutation flowshop instances by LH1 and LH2 algorithms are about 87.8% and 98.3% with respect to total tardiness, respectively. The non-permutation schedules also have achieved significant improvement in four different scenarios of due dates. Consequently, average percentage improvement (API) is 14.52% for flowshop problems with low tardiness factors. It is evident that exploring non-permutation schedule is effective and necessary for low tardiness factors.     

A diversified Tabu search approach for the open-pit mine production scheduling problem with metal uncertainty

This paper presents a metaheuristic solution approach based on Tabu search for the open-pit mine production scheduling problem with metal uncertainty. To search the feasible domain more extensively, two different diversification strategies are used to generate several initial solutions to be optimized by the Tabu search procedure. The first diversification strategy exploits a long-term memory of the search history. The second one relies on the variable neighborhood search method. Numerical results on realistic large-scale instances are provided to indicate the efficiency of the solution approach to produce very good solutions in relatively short computational times.     

Tabu search and GRASP for the maximum diversity problem

In this paper, we develop new heuristic procedures for the maximum diversity problem (MDP). This NP-hard problem has a significant number of practical applications such as environmental balance, telecommunication services or genetic engineering. The proposed algorithm is based on the tabu search methodology and incorporates memory structures for both construction and improvement. Although proposed in seminal tabu search papers, memory-based constructions have often been implemented in naïve ways that disregard important elements of the fundamental tabu search proposals. We will compare our tabu search construction with a memory-less design and with previous algorithms recently developed for this problem. The constructive method can be coupled with a local search procedure or a short-term tabu search for improved outcomes. Extensive computational experiments with medium and large instances show that the proposed procedure outperforms the best heuristics reported in the literature within short computational times.     

Assigning students to course sections using tabu search

In this paper we describe a new student registration system which has been developed at the University of Valencia, Spain. The system has two steps. First, the students make a computer-aided course selection from the courses available at the University. Thereafter, an assignment procedure allocates students to sections in order to respect two criteria: to provide the students with satisfactory schedules and to get balanced section enrollments. The assignment process has two phases. In Phase I, we obtain a set of the best solutions for each student. The algorithm is based on the construction of maximum cardinality independent sets. In Phase II, these solution sets are put together and a tabu search algorithm looks for a satisfactory balance between course sections without causing the solution obtained for each student to worsen significantly. The system was used at the beginning of the academic year 1996/97 in the Faculty of Mathematics and could be extended in the near future to the rest of the University. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Tabu search for the single row facility layout problem using exhaustive 2-opt and insertion neighborhoods

The single row facility layout problem (SRFLP) is the problem of arranging facilities with given lengths on a line, while minimizing the weighted sum of the distances between all pairs of facilities. The problem is NP-hard. In this paper, we present two tabu search implementations, one involving an exhaustive search of the 2-opt neighborhood and the other involving an exhaustive search of the insertion neighborhood. We also present techniques to significantly speed up the search of the two neighborhoods. Our computational experiments show that the speed up techniques are effective, and our tabu search implementations are competitive. Our tabu search implementations improved previously known best solutions for 23 out of the 43 large sized SRFLP benchmark instances.     

A tabu search algorithm for scheduling pharmaceutical packaging operations

This paper addresses a practical scheduling problem arising in the packaging department of a pharmaceutical industrial plant. The problem is modeled as a multi-purpose machine scheduling problem with setup and removal times, release and due dates and additional constraints related to the scarce availability of tools and human operators. The objective functions are minimization of makespan and maximum tardiness in lexicographic order. Representing a solution with a directed graph allows us to devise an effective tabu search algorithm to solve the problem. Computational experiments, carried on real and randomly generated instances, show the effectiveness of this approach.     

A variable selection method based on Tabu search for logistic regression models

A Tabu search method is proposed and analysed for selecting variables that are subsequently used in Logistic Regression Models. The aim is to find from among a set of m variables a smaller subset which enables the efficient classification of cases. Reducing dimensionality has some very well-known advantages that are summarized in literature. The specific problem consists in finding, for a small integer value of p, a subset of size p of the original set of variables that yields the greatest percentage of hits in Logistic Regression. The proposed Tabu search method performs a deep search in the solution space that alternates between a basic phase (that uses simple moves) and a diversification phase (to explore regions not previously visited). Testing shows that it obtains significantly better results than the Stepwise, Backward or Forward methods used by classic statistical packages. Some results of applying these methods are presented.     

Tabu search for multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling with schedule-dependent setup times

In this paper, a multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem with schedule-dependent setup times is considered. A schedule-dependent setup time is defined as a setup time dependent on the assignment of resources to activities over time, when resources are, e.g., placed in different locations. In such a case, the time necessary to prepare the required resource for processing an activity depends not only on the sequence of activities but, more generally, on the locations in which successive activities are executed. Activities are non-preemptable, resources are renewable, and the objective is to minimize the project duration. A local search metaheuristic—tabu search is proposed to solve this strongly NP-hard problem, and it is compared with the multi-start iterative improvement method as well as with random sampling. A computational experiment is described, performed on a set of instances based on standard test problems constructed by the ProGen project generator. The algorithms are computationally compared, the results are analyzed and discussed, and some conclusions are given.     

No-wait Job Shop Scheduling: Tabu Search and Complexity of Subproblems

This paper deals with the no-wait job shop problem with a makespan objective. We present some new theoretical properties on the complexity of subproblems associated with a well-known decomposition approach. Justified by the complexity results, we implement a fast tabu search algorithm for the problem at hand. It is extensively tested on known benchmark instances and compares favorably to the best existing algorithms for the no-wait job shop as well as the no-wait flow shop.     

Tabu search heuristics for the order batching problem in manual order picking systems

In a manual order picking system, order pickers walk or ride through a distribution warehouse in order to collect items requested by (internal or external) customers. In order to perform these operations efficiently, it is usually required that customer orders be combined into (more substantial) picking orders that are limited in size. The order batching problem considered in this paper deals with the question of how a given set of customer orders should be combined into picking orders such that the total length of all picker tours necessary for all of the requested items to be collected is minimized. For the solution of this problem the authors suggest two approaches based on the tabu search principle. The first is a (classic) tabu search (TS), and the second is the attribute-based hill climber (ABHC). In a series of extensive numerical experiments, these approaches are benchmarked against other solution methods put forward in the current literature. It is demonstrated that the proposed methods are superior to the existing methods and provide solutions which may allow distribution warehouses to operate more efficiently.     

Tabu search for graph partitioning

In this paper, we develop a tabu search procedure for solving the uniform graph partitioning problem. Tabu search, an abstract heuristic search method, has been shown to have promise in solving several NP-hard problems, such as job shop and flow shop scheduling, vehicle routing, quadratic assignment, and maximum satisfiability. We compare tabu search to other heuristic procedures for graph partitioning, and demonstrate that tabu search is superior to other solution approaches for the uniform graph partitioning problem both with respect to solution quality and computational requirements.     

Accelerated tabu search for no-wait flowshop scheduling problem with maximum lateness criterion

For the no-wait flowshop scheduling problem with maximum lateness criterion, properties are developed to speed up three kinds of basic operations generating candidate solutions, i.e., the insertion of a new job into a partial sequence, and the insertion and exchange neighborhood moves. The properties reduce the time to evaluate a candidate from O(nm)$O(\mathit{nm})$ to O  (1) and simplify the implementation of the heuristics based on the basic operations by evaluating candidates before their generation. The properties also reduce from O(n³m)$O(n^{3}m)$ to O(n²)$O(n^2)$ the time complexity of well-known NEH heuristic and the complete evaluation of the insertion and exchange neighborhoods. Tabu search (TS) is applied to the considered problem, since TS tries to find the best neighbor of the current solution in each iteration and therefore can much benefit from the speedups. Three different ways to use insertion and exchange neighborhoods are compared in TS. Computational experiments show that the speedups are more helpful as job number increases and all proposed TS algorithms are more effective and robust than the existing algorithms. Although two- and single-neighborhood TS algorithms are not significantly different, two-neighborhood TS algorithms are more preferable.     

A tabu search and a genetic algorithm for solving a bicriteria general job shop scheduling problem

This paper deals with a general job shop scheduling problem with multiple constraints, coming from printing and boarding industry. The objective is the minimization of two criteria, the makespan and the maximum lateness, and we are interested in finding an approximation of the Pareto frontier. We propose a fast and elitist genetic algorithm based on NSGA-II for solving the problem. The initial population of this algorithm is either randomly generated or partially generated by using a tabu search algorithm, that minimizes a linear combination of the two criteria. Both the genetic and the tabu search algorithms are tested on benchmark instances from flexible job shop literature and computational results show the interest of both methods to obtain an efficient and effective resolution method.     

A tabu search algorithm for assigning teachers to courses

In this paper we deal with the problem of assigning teachers to courses in a secondary school. The problem appears when a timetable is to be built and the teaching assignments are not fixed. We have developed a tabu search algorithm to solve the problem. The parameters involved in the algorithm have been estimated by using multiple regression techniques. The computational results, obtained on a set of Spanish secondary schools, show that the solutions obtained by this automatic procedure can be favourably compared with the solutions proposed by the experts.     

A user's guide to tabu search

We describe the main features of tabu search, emphasizing a perspective for guiding a user to understand basic implementation principles for solving combinatorial or nonlinear problems. We also identify recent developments and extensions that have contributed to increasing the efficiency of the method. One of the useful aspects of tabu search is the ability to adapt a rudimentary prototype implementation to encompass additional model elements, such as new types of constraints and objective functions. Similarly, the method itself can be evolved to varying levels of sophistication. We provide several examples of discrete optimization problems to illustrate the strategic concerns of tabu search, and to show how they may be exploited in various contexts. Our presentation is motivated by the emergence of an extensive literature of computational results, which demonstrates that a well-tuned implementation makes it possible to obtain solutions of high quality for difficult problems, yielding outcomes in some settings that have not been matched by other known techniques.The research of this paper has been supported in part by the joint Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Office of Naval Research Contract No. F49620-90-C-0033, at the University of Colorado and by the Swiss National Research Council Grant No. 20-27926.89.     

A comparison of several nearest neighbor classifier metrics using Tabu Search algorithm for the feature selection problem

The feature selection problem is an interesting and important topic which is relevant for a variety of database applications. This paper utilizes the Tabu Search metaheuristic algorithm to implement a feature subset selection procedure while the nearest neighbor classification method is used for the classification task. Tabu Search is a general metaheuristic procedure that is used in order to guide the search to obtain good solutions in complex solution spaces. Several metrics are used in the nearest neighbor classification method, such as the euclidean distance, the Standardized Euclidean distance, the Mahalanobis distance, the City block metric, the Cosine distance and the Correlation distance, in order to identify the most significant metric for the nearest neighbor classifier. The performance of the proposed algorithms is tested using various benchmark datasets from UCI Machine Learning Repository.     

Iterated tabu search for the car sequencing problem

This paper introduces an iterated tabu search heuristic for the daily car sequencing problem in which a set of cars must be sequenced so as to satisfy requirements from the paint shop and the assembly line. The iterated tabu search heuristic combines a classical tabu search with perturbation operators that help escape from local optima. The resulting heuristic is flexible, easy to implement, and fast. It has produced very good results on a set of test instances provided by the French car manufacturer Renault.     

Transportation planning in freight forwarding companies: Tabu search algorithm for the integrated operational transportation planning problem

The integrated operational transportation planning problem extends the traditional vehicle routing and scheduling problem by the possibility of outsourcing a part of the requests by involving subcontractors. The purpose of this paper is to present the integrated planning problem and to propose an approach for solving it by a tabu search heuristic. Existing approaches from literature which discuss vehicle routing combined with outsourcing regard only one specific type of subcontracting. This paper describes and explores the complex situation where an own fleet and several types of subcontracting are used for request fulfillment. As the approach contains new aspects, unknown to the literature so far, tabu search is extended to special types of moves. On the basis of computational results the cost structure is analyzed in order to investigate the long-term planning question whether and to what extend it is profitable to maintain an own fleet.     

A Tabu Search Algorithm for Quadratic 0—1 Programming Problem

1.IntroductionThemathematicalmodelofaquaduatico-1programmingproblemisasfollows:MinimizesubjecttwhereI,AsfaraspaperL1'2Jcanseemedel(I)(fordu=O)isveryimPOrtantinthemarshallingofsinglegrouptrainbetweenmarshallingstationsinrailwaynetworkandthemarshallingoftraininnetw0rkwiththetw0types0fvehiclefl0w,butproblem(I)isNP-C.C0nsiderarelax-ationproblemasf0llows:MinimizeIngeneral,solvingrelaxati0nproblemiseasierthansolvingcombinatiorial0ptimalpr0b-lem,thesameaslinearpr0grammingproblemissolvableinPOly…     

Solving the serial batching problem in job shop manufacturing systems

This paper addresses the serial batch scheduling problem embedded in a job shop environment to minimize makespan. Sequence dependent family setup times and a job availability assumption are also taken into account. In consideration of batching decisions, we propose a tabu search algorithm which consists of various neighborhood functions, multiple tabu lists and a sophisticated diversification structure. Computational experiments show that our algorithm outperforms a well-known tabu search approach which is developed for solving the traditional job shop problem. These results also confirm the benefits of batching.