A tabu search approach for the flow shop scheduling problem

In this paper, we propose a tabu search approach for solving the permutation flow shop scheduling problem. The proposed implementation of the tabu search approach suggests simple techniques for generating neighborhoods of a given sequence and a combined scheme for intensification and diversification that has not been considered before. These new features result in an implementation that improves upon previous tabu search implementations that use mechanisms of comparable simplicity. Also, better results were obtained than those produced by a simulated annealing algorithm from the literature. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.