Development of a tabu search heuristic for solving multi-objective combinatorial problems with applications to constructing discrete optimal designs

Abstract

Tabu search (TS) has been successfully applied for solving many complex combinatorial optimization problems in the areas of operations research and production control. However, TS is for single-objective problems in its present form. In this article, a TS-based heuristic is developed to determine Pareto-efficient solutions to a multi-objective combinatorial optimization problem. The developed algorithm is then applied to the discrete optimal design problem in statistics to demonstrate its usefulness.