Article ID: | iaor201110796 |
Volume: | 19 |
Issue: | 4 |
Start Page Number: | 467 |
End Page Number: | 493 |
Publication Date: | Dec 2011 |
Journal: | Central European Journal of Operations Research |
Authors: | Schneider Ulrike |
Keywords: | heuristics: tabu search, allocation: resources, production |
We apply a tabu search method to a scheduling problem of a company producing cables for cars: the task is to determine on what machines and in which order the cable jobs should be produced in order to save production costs. First, the problem is modeled as a combinatorial optimization problem. We then employ a tabu search algorithm as an approach to solve the specific problem of the company, adapt various intensification as well as diversification strategies within the algorithm, and demonstrate how these different implementations improve the results. Moreover, we show how the computational cost in each iteration of the algorithm can be reduced drastically from