We are presenting in this volume selected, peer-reviewed, short papers that were presented at the EURO Mini Conference XXVIII on Variable Neighborhood Search (MEC XXVIII VNS) which was held during October 4-7, 2012, in Herceg Novi, Montenegro.

The NP-hard capacitated clustering problem (CCP) is a general model with a number of relevant applications. This paper proposes a highly effective iterated variable neighborhood search (IVNS) algorithm for solving the problem. IVNS combines an extended variable neighborhood descent method and a randomized shake procedure to explore effectively the search space. The computational results obtaine...

A VNS-based heuristic using both a facility as well as a customer type neighbourhood structure is proposed to solve the p-centre problem in the continuous space. Simple but effective enhancements to the original Elzinga-Hearn algorithm as well as a powerful ‘locate-allocate’ local search used within VNS are proposed. In addition, efficient implementations in both neighbourhood structures are pr...

A piano fingering indicates which finger should play each note in a piece. Such a guideline is very helpful for both amateur and experienced players in order to play a piece fluently. In this paper, we propose a variable neighborhood search algorithm to generate piano fingerings for complex polyphonic music, a frequently encountered case that was ignored in previous research. The algorithm take...

The order batching problem is a part of the picking process of items in a warehouse. A set of items conform an order and a set of orders conform a batch. The problem consist of grouping the orders received in the warehouse in different batches. Each batch have to be collected by a single picker without exceed a capacity limit. The objective is to minimize the total time needed to collect all th...

Embedded systems have become an essential part of our lives, thanks to their evolution in the recent years, but the main drawback is their power consumption. This paper is focused on improving the memory allocation of embedded systems to reduce their power consumption. We propose a parallel variable neighborhood search algorithm for the dynamic memory allocation problem, and compare it with the...

The maximally diverse grouping problem (MDGP) is a relevant NP-hard optimization with number of real-world applications. However, solving large instances the computationally challenging. This work dedicated to new heuristic algorithm for problem, which distinguishes itself by two original features. First, it introduces first neighborhood decomposition strategy accelerate examinations. Second, i...