Metaheuristic algorithms hybridised with variable neighbourhood search for solving the response time variability problem

Albert Corominas (), Alberto García-Villoria () and Rafael Pastor ()

TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, 2013, vol. 21, issue 2, 296-312

Abstract: The response time variability problem (RTVP) is a scheduling problem with a wide range of real-world applications: mixed-model assembly lines, multi-threaded computer systems, network environments, broadcast of commercial videotapes and machine maintenance, among others. The RTVP arises whenever products, clients or jobs need to be sequenced in such a way that the variability in the time between the points at which they receive the necessary resources is minimised. Since the RTVP is NP-hard, several heuristic and metaheuristic techniques are needed to solve non-small instances. The published metaheuristic procedure that obtained the best solutions, on average, for non-small RTVP instances is an algorithm based on a variant of the variable neighbourhood search (VNS), called Reduced VNS (RVNS). We propose hybridising RVNS with three existing algorithms based on tabu search, multi-start and particle swarm optimisation. The aim is to combine the strengths of the metaheuristics. A computational experiment is carried out and it is shown that, on average, all proposed hybrid methods are able to improve the best published solutions. Copyright Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa 2013

Keywords: Response time variability; Fair sequences; Scheduling; Just-in-time; Variable neighbourhood search; Hybrid metaheuristics; 68T20; 68W20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1007/s11750-011-0175-y

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