Extension of reverse elimination method through a dynamic management of the tabu list

The Reverse Elimination Method (REM) is a dynamic strategy for managing the tabu list. It is based on logical interdependencies between the solutions encountered during recent iterations of the search. REM provides both a necessary and sufficient condition to prevent cycling. The purpose of this paper is first to incorporate in REM a chronological order rule when cycling is unavoidable, thereby assuring the finite convergence of Tabu Search. Secondly, we correct a generalization of REM, the so-called REM-t method proposed by Glover where t is an integer parameter which controls the number of tabu attributes. A suitable adjustment of this parameter t can be designed in order to create a balance between diversification and intensification. In this paper, new dynamic rules for controlling the adjustment of the parameter t are proposed. Finally, to illustrate the differences between the variants proposed for managing the tabu list, we test some of them on the 0–1 multidimensional knapsack problem.