Tabu search for the single row facility layout problem using exhaustive 2-opt and insertion neighborhoods

The single row facility layout problem (SRFLP) is the problem of arranging facilities with given lengths on a line, while minimizing the weighted sum of the distances between all pairs of facilities. The problem is NP-hard. In this paper, we present two tabu search implementations, one involving an exhaustive search of the 2-opt neighborhood and the other involving an exhaustive search of the insertion neighborhood. We also present techniques to significantly speed up the search of the two neighborhoods. Our computational experiments show that the speed up techniques are effective, and our tabu search implementations are competitive. Our tabu search implementations improved previously known best solutions for 23 out of the 43 large sized SRFLP benchmark instances.

► We present two tabu search implementations for the single row facility layout problem.
► We do an exhaustive search of the 2-opt and the insertion neighborhoods in the tabu search.
► We present techniques to significantly speed up the exhaustive neighborhood search processes.
► Insertion neighborhood is better than 2-opt neighborhood for the problem.
► Our algorithms beat the best known solutions for 23 of the 43 benchmark instances.