A tabu search algorithm for the flowshop scheduling problem with changing neighborhoods

Flowshop scheduling deals with the sequencing of a set of jobs that visit a set of machines in the same order. A tabu search procedure is proposed for the flowshop scheduling problem with the makespan minimization criterion. Different from other tabu search procedures, the neighborhood of a solution is generated using a combination of three different exchange mechanisms. This has resulted in a well-diversified search procedure. The performance of the algorithm is tested using Taillard’s benchmark problems. The results are compared to recently developed neuro-tabu search and ant colony heuristics. The computational results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.