Tabu Search—Part II

TLDR: The elements of staged search and structured move sets are characterized, which bear on the issue of finiteness, and new dynamic strategies for managing tabu lists are introduced, allowing fuller exploitation of underlying evaluation functions.

Abstract: This is the second half of a two part series devoted to the tabu search metastrategy for optimization problems. Part I introduced the fundamental ideas of tabu search as an approach for guiding other heuristics to overcome the limitations of local optimality, both in a deterministic and a probabilistic framework. Part I also reported successful applications from a wide range of settings, in which tabu search frequently made it possible to obtain higher quality solutions than previously obtained with competing strategies, generally with less computational effort. Part II, in this issue, examines refinements and more advanced aspects of tabu search. Following a brief review of notation, Part II introduces new dynamic strategies for managing tabu lists, allowing fuller exploitation of underlying evaluation functions. In turn, the elements of staged search and structured move sets are characterized, which bear on the issue of finiteness. Three ways of applying tabu search to the solution of integer programmin...