Article ID: | iaor20084564 |
Country: | Netherlands |
Volume: | 178 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 85 |
End Page Number: | 91 |
Publication Date: | Apr 2007 |
Journal: | European Journal of Operational Research |
Authors: | Ghiani Gianpaolo, Musmanno Roberto, Grieco Antonio, Caricato Pierpaolo |
Keywords: | heuristics: tabu search, programming: branch and bound |
The single loop material flow system design is a combinatorial optimization problem, arising in material handling system design, which amounts to designing a unidirectional loop flow pattern as well as to locate pickup and delivery stations. The objective is to minimize the time required to carry out all material flow movements between cells. In this paper, we develop valid inequalities for a previously proposed formulation. The valid inequalities are then embedded into a branch-and-cut framework which is shown to solve much larger instances to optimality than those reported in the literature. A tailored tabu search heuristic is also illustrated and computationally assessed.