From theory to application: tabu search in textile production scheduling

This paper presents the experience of applying the tabu search metaheuristic to production scheduling in weaving. The problem, known to be NP-complete, partially belongs to the class of parallel non-identical machine scheduling problems with non-linear delay penalties and sequence-dependent set-up costs and times. The huge problem dimension and the presence of transversal constraints among machines suggests tabu search application. The authors show some results pointing out the good behaviour of TS in several aspects.