Some new ideas in TS for job shop scheduling

Abstract

This paper deals with a classic job-shop scheduling problem with the makespan criterion. Some properties of the fast algorithm TSAB of Nowicki and Smutnicki, as well as properties of the solution space, have been discussed and examined. Next, by introducing the original method of diversification, TSAB has been embedded in more advanced algorithmic framework i-TSAB, which has far analogy to path relinking technique. Newly proposed algorithm is faster and has better accuracy than TSAB, runs within time of minutes on a PC and already in preliminary tests provides 23 new upper bounds among 35 unsolved yet common Taillard's benchmarks.© 2005 by Kluwer Academic Publishers.