Article ID: | iaor201530037 |
Volume: | 67 |
Issue: | 4 |
Start Page Number: | 174 |
End Page Number: | 183 |
Publication Date: | Mar 2016 |
Journal: | Computers and Operations Research |
Authors: | Resende M G C, Chaves A A, Lorena L A N, Senne E L F |
Keywords: | heuristics, heuristics: genetic algorithms, combinatorial optimization |
The minimization of tool switches problem (MTSP) seeks a sequence to process a set of jobs so that the number of tool switches required is minimized. The MTSP is well known to be NP-hard. This paper presents a new hybrid heuristic based on the Biased Random Key Genetic Algorithm (BRKGA) and the Clustering Search (CS). The main idea of CS is to identify promising regions of the search space by generating solutions with a metaheuristic, such as BRKGA, and clustering them to be further explored with local search heuristics. The distinctive feature of the proposed method is to simplify this clustering process. Computational results for the MTSP considering instances available in the literature are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of the CS with BRKGA.