Multiple neighborhoods in tabu search: successful applications for operations management problems

Sa？etak A metaheuristic is a refined solution method able to find a satisfying solution to a difficult problem in a reasonable amount of time. A local search metaheuristic works on a single solution and tries to improve it iteratively. Tabu search is one of the most famous local search, where at each iteration, a neighbor solution is generated from the current solution by performing a specific modification (called a move) on the latter. In contrast with most of the existing literature, the goal of this paper is to present tabu search approaches where different neighborhood structures (i.e., different types of moves) are jointly used. The discussion is illustrated for various operations management problems: truck loading, job scheduling, inventory management, and dimensioning of assembly lines