Metaheuristics are general problem solving algorithms which abstract from the actual problem description. Therefore they can be easily applied to many optimization problems. Simulated annealing is a simple and fast metaheuristic with an analogy to metal processing. As metal particles generate a solid and regular structure when cooling slowing simulated annealing seeks a low-energy solution avoi...

Simulated annealing is a well-studied local search metaheuristic used to address discrete and, to a lesser extent, continuous optimization problems. The key feature of simulated annealing is that it provides a mechanism to escape local optima by allowing hill-climbing moves (i.e., moves which worsen the objective function value) in hopes of finding a global optimum. A brief history of simulated...

In today’s competitive transportation systems, passengers search to find traveling agencies that are able to serve them efficiently considering both traveling time and transportation costs. In this paper, we present a new model for the traveling salesman problem with multiple transporters (TSPMT). In the proposed model, which is more applicable than the traditional versions, each city has diffe...

The World-Wide Web (WWW) based Internet services have become a major channel for information delivery. For the same reason, information overload also has become a serious problem to the users of such services. It has been estimated that the amount of information stored on the Internet doubled every 18 months. The speed of increase of home pages can be even faster, some people estimated that it ...

The capacitated clustering problem (CCP) is the problem in which a given set of weighted objects is to be partitioned into clusters so that the total weight of objects in each cluster is less than a given value (cluster 'capacity'). The objective is to minimize the total scatter of objects from the 'centre' of the cluster to which they have been allocated. A simple constructive heuristic, a R-i...

  The clustering problem under the criterion of minimum sum of squares is a non-convex and non-linear program, which possesses many locally optimal values, resulting that its solution often falls into these trap and therefore cannot converge to global optima solution. In this paper, an efficient hybrid optimization algorithm is developed for solving this problem, called Tabu-KM. It gathers the ...

Solving optimization problems in highdimensional stochastic search spaces is a difficult task. In this work, we present a hybrid parallel simulated annealing algorithm to find optimal solutions in such domains. The algorithm uses a population of several starting points initially to explore the search space in a parallel fashion and after each evaluation better members reproduce asexually while ...

Purpose – In order to achieve excellence in manufacturing, goals like lean, economic and quality production with enhanced productivity play a crucial role in this competitive environment. It also necessitates major improvements in generally three primary technical areas: variation reduction, equipment reliability, and production scheduling. Complexity of the real world scheduling problems also ...